Singaporeans' quick guide to building trust with customers

Before we start, let’s take a look at some customer psychology. This is general all over the world, not just in Singapore.

• Customers hate to make changes. Any changes in suppliers, product specifications and agreement terms are to be avoided as much as possible, to avoid all possible risks;
• Hence, if customers were to make a purchase, they will need to mitigate ALL the risks associated with buying from you; and
• Customers will hold you accountable for their results, i.e. if customers' expectations were not met, they will expect you to help them resolve the situation.

As such, customers need to trust you, before they even consider buying from you. Even when they had bought from you, you will still need to foster that trust so that they continue to buy from you, or refer someone else in their organisation to buy from you.

How to Build Trust with Customers, Especially New Customers
If trust is so important in the sales process, how then do we build trust with someone we barely know such as our customers? How can we build trust with our customers (esp. new ones) within a short span of time?

Before we proceed further, we will have to look into the concept of trust. Does it mean that customers will trust honest sales people who will not lie to them? Actually, being honest is not enough, there are 2 aspects of trust that customers expect of sales people:

1. Trust in your integrity; and
2. Trust in your capability

Therefore, in order to build trust with customers whom you barely (and barely know you too), you will need to do the following (in order of importance):
1. Be proactive to show you care for your customer;
2. Provide sensible solutions that work; and
3. Be honest and truthful

The most important factor here is being "proactive to show you care for your customer".

Specifically, it means not just selling your products, but also help customers mitigate any risks of buying from you. In short, it means avoiding or reducing asking the following questions at the beginning of your sales cycle:

• What is your budget?
• When can you make a decision?
• How much quantity do you need?
• How often do you buy?

The problem with the above questions is that they focus on your agenda, and not your customer's. If the customer has decided to seriously consider buying from you, asking the above questions is probably necessary to work out a sensible proposal. However, if the customer has not felt comfortable enough to seriously consider you, asking such questions could actually upset them.

Instead, you could ask more of the following questions:
• Which aspects do you like about us?
• What are some of your biggest concerns if you want to buy something like this?
• What are some of your concerns if you were to choose us or our products?

These questions engage the customers to share more about what they think and feel. If there are any customer concerns, such questions make the customer feel comfortable to come forth with his/ her views.

While some sales people may feel uneasy asking customers what their concerns (or objections) are when they did not mention any, the key thing here is if the customer indeed has some objections or concerns, it is best that they raise those concerns so that you can address them. The bigger danger for sales people is to assume customers have no objections when they did not mention any.

Listen to What Your Customers Did NOT Say
Sometimes, customers might be giving a lot of different unspoken signals about what they think and feel. One way of making customers talk more is to:

• Ask them clarifying questions to clarify any information that may be too general or vague. Clarifying questions, when asked properly, can make the customer feel you are really interested in what they are saying;
• Summarise and paraphrase what they had just said, especially after they had shared lots of information with you.

Summarising what they had just said can make them feel you have filly understood what they told you.

Sometimes, you simply just need to focus on the customer intently, and really listen to what they did NOT say. At the end of a conversation with a customer, ask yourself:
• What is his/ her overall emotion and mood?
• What are options or choices that he/ she is unaware?
• What assumptions or subjective judgement did he/ she make to arrive at the conclusion?
• What important things that he/ she did NOT say?
• What do you think will be his/ her next steps?

You will be surprised as to how much non-verbal information you can get from your customer, even if you haven't been practicing such listening skills ever before. We had conducted such role play exercises with telephone customer care professionals, and we had them paired up and seated back-to-back to simulate a phone call situation.

In most cases, they got 4-5 questions right on the first try.