By Peter K. Adler

Among the First Principles of professional sales is gaining the trust of your prospective client. We know this all too well, don’t we?

Despite our knowledge, we can all use a review from time to time on the most important aspects of selling to the government buyer or, for that matter, to any prospective buyer. We know that trust is earned, but what are the basic mechanisms upon which this trust is built? For better or worse, our government buyer will assess our trustworthiness early on in our first meeting or substantive phone conversation.

Perhaps one of the quickest ways to gain trust is to have a party that your prospect knows and respects in common with you and that you have successfully provided a solution for in this third party’s business. While their requirements may be quite different from those of your prospect, it is the implicit personal endorsement that helps to establish you with your current prospective buyer.

Oddly enough, it is easier to develop a trust relationship by listening to your prospective buyer attentively than it is by telling him or her something. Why is this so? Most likely this occurs because culturally we are pre-disposed towards patient listeners. We associate this ability to listen attentively with role of any professional adviser. And, after all, that is the role we are attempting to fulfill in this transaction.

When we do address the prospect, it can be very effective to note some shortcoming or less than perfect attribute of our offering. Why? Because we do not readily accept someone who purports to have the perfect solution. In fact, such a solution rarely exists. So why spend our personal “capital” on proposing a solution that sounds “too good to be true?”

Given the current sales climate, which has become increasingly competitive, now more than ever we must gain the buyer’s trust very early in the cycle. Failure to do so most likely puts us “out of the running” for the buyer’s business.

Understanding the need to establish credibility with the prospective client is contained within the skills portfolio of all sales professionals. However, do we remember to “dust off” this skill and establish our personal as well as our corporate credibility with each and every buyer with whom we deal, whether that is a government end-user, a teaming partner, or a vendor with whom we do business?

This earned credibility endows us with the mantle of the trusted adviser in many cases. This is the ideal place to be when we are working to position a solution for the benefit of both our prospective client and for our enterprise.

Peter K. Adler of Seneca Creek Consulting LLC can be reached at padler@SenecaCreekConsulting.com