Happy National New Friends Day! Does anyone still send Facebook friend requests these days? Or did everyone decide to swap those for LinkedIn “connections”? 😅 

In today’s Follow Up:

• Building trust with prospects 🤝 

• 25 classic sales letters 🤯 

• Discovery question sales tip 🗣️ 

• Sales across the internet 🖥️ 

• LinkedIn sightings & a sales meme 😂 

Sponsor The Follow Up | Connect with us on LinkedIn

Building Trust with Your Prospects

It’s no surprise that salespeople aren’t known as the most “trustworthy” people in the world.

In fact, a Hubspot study found that only 3% of people consider sales reps to be trustworthy.

Used car salesmen really ruined that one for us…

Your ability to build trust with your prospects can be the difference between a healthy commission check and eating ramen for the next month.

But like most things, building trust is much easier said than done.

So how can you build trust with your prospects, close more deals, and finally stop eating ramen rake in those fat commission checks?

Here are 3 tips for building trust as a sales rep. 👇️ 

1. Do Your Research

The more you know about a prospect = the more trust you can build.

For example, let’s pretend you need a new roof and call two roofing companies to come to your house for a quote.

They both provide the same product, but the interactions go something like this:

Sales rep #1: “So I hear you guys need a new roof. Do you know the measurements on it or when it was last replaced? I can get up there and figure it out, but may take an hour or so.”

Sales rep #2: “Before I came out I was able to pull all of the measurements of your roof through our satellite imagery software, and found that your house faces South which means you’re more prone to sunlight damage. I’m still not sure if you need a new roof, but I’d like to do some tests on it and then I can walk you through all of the options. Sound fair?”

It’s obvious, right?

The sales rep who shows up prepared is seen as the expert and “trusted” advisor.

Let your prospects dig into their pain points and initiatives, but do enough research to show that you truly care about the relationship.

This means showing up to every call with information like:

• What does the company do?

• How big are they (rev & employees)?

• How long have they been in business?

2. Stay Consistent

Do what you say you’re going to.

> Call at the exact time they agreed to.
> Send the email that you promised.
> Bring the information you said you would.

Building trust won’t happen on one call, so it’s important to be consistent in every interaction.

While it seems simple, it’s one of the most important things you can do in your career.

Becoming a consistent and reliable salesperson will not only help you build trust with your prospects but also with your internal team.

3. Be Transparent

Sometimes it’s best to state the obvious.

Prospects know that our ultimate goal is to sell them our product, and we can’t change that.

But we can be honest and transparent about the situation:

“Obviously as a sales rep, I want you to become a customer of ours. But if our solution isn’t the right fit for you, then I will be the first to let you know. Does that sound fair?”

Bringing up the elephant in the room gives the prospect an opportunity to let their guard down and talk like an actual human.

Because at the end of the day, B2B sales is just humans selling to other humans (even though I swear some sales reps can’t be real humans…).

TLDR:

• Do your research: Let your research show that you actually care about the prospect and their situation.

• Stay consistent: Do what you say you’re going to do.

• Be transparent: State the obvious and allow the prospect to let their guard down.

Steal these 25 classic sales letters

Stop writing every damn email from scratch. That’s essentially the opposite of self-care, and we can’t bear to see you suffer.

Here’s a pack of proven sales letters for first-touch, follow-up, and break-up communications — including a “last call” email that attained a 33% response rate, and a drip campaign that closed $100k in a month.

Use what already exists before you hit another inbox.

Checking in on LinkedIn 👀 

LinkedIn = THE place for shirtless CEO pics? 🤔 

Sales Meme of the Day

Want to advertise in The Follow Up? Click Here