The Origin of Trustpointe – A Journey to Build Trust in Sales

Trustpointe was never just about business for me—it was about creating something different. Something deeper. Something that could transform how sales professionals build relationships. Frustrated by the superficial tactics and lack of genuine connection in traditional sales training, I set out to build something better.

For 18 years, I worked in my family’s chemical distribution business. Day in and day out, it was a grind that left me unfulfilled. I hated it. Chemistry wasn’t my passion, and the lack of heart in how we approached sales was draining. My dad, bless him, handed me the keys to the company on my 42nd birthday. CEO and President. The dream job, right? Not for me. I still remember telling him, “Dad, I love you, and I’m grateful for this, but I quit.” I walked away that very day.

Sales had never felt right to me. I dreaded it—dreamt about watching buyers go down in a fiery sales crash night after night. It didn’t sit well with me because something was missing. It wasn’t the act of selling itself that I hated, but the way we were doing it. There was no trust, no connection, no meaning. I didn’t just want to sell something—I wanted to build something.

Two months later, I bought the Sandler Trustpointe franchise. Why? Because I knew that if I was going to make a difference, I needed to become the defender of salespeople. I wanted to transform sales from something people despised into something they could be proud of. But it wasn’t easy for my dad to understand. He’d never learned how to sell, not really. The company had never even held a sales meeting.

I knew trust had to be the foundation of everything I did moving forward. It became sacred to me. So sacred that I sought out Dr. Marya Bower, a PhD from Earlham College who specialized in Gestalt training. I asked her to teach me everything she knew about trust. She handed me dissertations, pages upon pages, and one thing kept coming up: risk and vulnerability. That’s when it clicked. You know someone trusts you when they’re willing to be vulnerable, to take risks with you. And let’s be honest, buyers don’t like admitting they’ve made a bad decision in the past. That’s where trust comes in.

From the very beginning, Trustpointe has been about more than just sales training. It’s been about creating genuine, trust-based connections. It's about showing salespeople how to sell with integrity, how to build relationships rooted in trust, and how to create something lasting and meaningful.

And that’s the mission we continue to live by every single day. Trust is everything. It’s not just the way we do business—it’s who we are.

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