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“Trust-based selling is not tied to any particular process; instead, it depends on attitudes and values based on principles. It is a human process” Charles H. Green, Trusted Advisor Associates.

Prudential Life: A Trust-based Selling success story*

A few years back, Priscilla Myers took over sales and marketing for Prudential’s (US) life insurance agency business. She had no prior experience in sales whatsoever. Prudential’s chairman at the time said “It’s about people. You’ll figure it out.” That she did.

Within 6 months, Priscilla violated four common sales principles. First, she announced in a price competitive business, that Prudential would not compete solely or primarily on price. Then, she de emphasized quotas to her sales force. On several occasions she agreed with customers who said Prudential’s valid proposition to them was inferior to a competitor’s. Finally, she developed non-legally binding sales agreements with her key customers.

All of these sound like suicidal policies in today’s cutthroat business world. Yet, Priscilla’s unit achieved growth of more than 40 percent in the first full yer, well ahead of plan. Second year results were even better. What did she do?

She believed that she needed to build a long term relationship with the client. To do that, she worked with (not against) the client, looked at the big picture and focused on the long term.  She also saw things from the client’s perspective and all agreements were built on a mutually beneficial basis.

Priscilla didn’t use a set of clever sales tactics or a magical sales process. Nor did she focus on a competitive strategy. Her actions emerged from a deep belief  that, if she focused on helping her customers, her needs would be met as well.

Priscilla was customer focused for the sake of the customer, not for the sake of getting the sale. She was willing to be transparent, she adopted a medium-long term and collaborative approach. Priscilla did something “radical.”

That is Trust-based Selling- and it works.

(*based on a true story and an excerpt from Trust-based Selling, by Charles H. Green, Trusted Advisor Associates)

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Welcome, Andrew, to Team Egyii.

In a nutshell, Andrew brings to clients years of hands on experience in the call centre space and in the learning and development arena, working with major banks, insurance and technology companies, to name a few.

Andrew helps clients with the effective sales conversation and the reinforcement behind it. His focus is on solutions for front line service, sales teams and management:

Frontline sales and acquisition

Frontline customer experience

Leadership and coaching development

For more on Andrew, see Andrew Sidwell and for more on the programmes he has delivered to banking, finance and the tech sector, see the following.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Bill O’Brien, the late CEO of Hanover Insurance, once told C. Otto Scharmer, author of Theory U – Leading from the Future as It Emerges that when facilitating corporate change, the success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.

This idea, that to create change in the new world of business, leaders need to look inside themelves first and connect with their own instincts, deep understandings and self-awareness, is the key to creating the kind of change that businesses need to succeed in the future.

It’s no good using the past to inform the present and future. What went well before, what the consensus of opinion is, and what is comfortable for the majority will only return businesses to the old world where external measurements and influences based on past experiences were used to decide on the future direction of the business.

According to C. Otto Scharmer, leaders need to engage in internal work before even considering change interventions. There are three kinds of internal work that need to be engaged in:

Suspending habitual patterns and seeing the situation with a fresh pair of eyes

Redirecting your attention from the exterior to your interior mental processes and really listening to yourself

Letting go of old identities and intentions

It is only when this internal work has been completed that leaders will be open to new visions and intentions, to redirecting attention to exterior action, and to creating new action, structures and practices to lead the business forward.

Every leader, whether a CEO or a learning and development designer, can benefit from turning inwards and connecting with their own source of wisdom before automatically adopting ideas and structures that are acceptable to the majority. These ideas will usually only present you with what is already acceptable and comfortable, and therefore what fits with the existing status quo.

Thus, the new learning and development will be first and foremost about internal awareness, insight and personal change. And coming out of this process will be new ideas, decisions and actions that will propel your business into a successful future.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

In his new book Branding Only Works on Cattle, Jonathan Salem Baskin says, “Today’s guerilla branding…(is) about giving consumers the reason and confidence to act, and the best way of doing this is by showing them behaviour that they can understand and trust. It’s all about doing things, not about saying things.”

In the ‘old world’ of business, branding was about communicating images, concepts and messages that will hopefully create an emotional connection with the audience and lead to brand loyalty. In the ‘new world’ business, according to Jonathan Salem Baskin, this just doesn’t work. People are too suspicious of your messages, and they have no interest in just listening to what you have to say. This means nothing to them without action.

In the ‘new world’ of business that we are now entering, brand loyalty rests on behaviour. Prove to your customers that you are real, authentic, and able to deliver what they want. Show, don’t tell.

This line of reasoning has a direct link to Private Wealth Management in banking. If Private Banks ever hope to win back the trust of their clients and hopefully, win over even more from competitors, then they had better shut up. Don’t make grandiose statements about your heritage, reputation and trustworthiness. Nobody’s going to listen.

To win in this new world of business, Private Banks are going to have to behave their way back to credibility. A bit like a wayward husband who has to seduce his wife all over again. Not with promises of fidelity, but with hour-by-hour actions that reveal his true intent. That’s why the future success of Private Banks is in their people, especially the people who interact and build relationships with clients. It’s in these people’s pure intent and concrete behaviours that the seed of new growth lies. It’s time for these venerable institutions to decide what specific new behaviours will win the trust of their ‘new’ clients.

So forget about designing a fancy ad campaign, or delivering a message of assurance from up on high. Get down and dirty with the specific actions your people can take to woo your clients minute-by-minute.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore