One of the main sources of trust is reciprocity. You trust someone because someone you trust trusts that person or company. And you pass that trust on.
A great example is the way in which several investors voluntarily gave their money to Bernie Madoff in his scheme.
Madoff, the man behind one of the biggest scams in history, used only the trust the market had in him.
Many of those who did this were sophisticated and wealthy individuals, marketing list of plumbers managers of family fortunes and paid managers of university investment portfolios and pension funds.
They all had access to competent financial advisors, tax professionals, and lawyers. Yet they handed over their wealth to Madoff.
No one could explain exactly what Bernie did with the money or how he managed to achieve such above-average returns. Trust in Madoff was irrational. So why should people have trusted him?
Simple, because other people trusted him. He served on the board of the Nasdaq stock exchange and had offices and other scams built with stolen money. But deep down, Bernie was only able to perpetuate his scams because of his past.
Now stop for a moment and think: just like Madoff, how many other professionals and companies do you know who built their careers based on this?
This reveals something very powerful about selling within the fortress walls of a closed community, like the very wealthy. Their walls are their dependence on information provided by other members of the community.
They trust them and distrust everyone else. But once the fortress is penetrated, with only one member being privileged, it serves as a safeguard for all the other inhabitants.
The bigger the market, the harder it is to gain people's trust.
In a small industry or segment, a marketer, salesperson, developer, and expert of any kind only needs the trust of one or a few well-known members to make all reservations about him or her disappear. And this is an important sales prospecting technique.
Once you have people's trust, like Madoff, you can act for good or for evil.
And the most important point about gaining someone's trust in a community is that it becomes viral, and the more valuable the trust, the greater its virality in the communities.
This is why it is so tempting to gain the trust of key influencers within your market: once you establish it, people will gradually develop a blind belief in what you do.
This should be the justification why every company and salesperson should invest some time in trust when defining their commercial prospecting techniques.
Regardless of the trust that you and your company inspire in the market, having an accurate idea of how your sales area is doing is essential.
A great way to gain your audience’s trust is by using the right tool . A good example is a sales CRM, such as Agendor . With it, you can track your customers and create a complete sales funnel.
Take a free trial and see for yourself what it can do for your company!