ATMOSPHERE OF TRUST AND THE MINDSET JOURNEY
FIRST, HOW WE THINK ABOUT 'SALES RESULTS'
Business and personal results rise and fall with each other. Below are some that clients have cared about through the years.
BUSINESS
RESULTS
“We had no idea how much our master/servant mindset was hurting margins.”
Mike Selz, VP Sales
Charlotte Pipe
Some common
business results
PERSONAL
RESULTS
“I just accepted the “sales is all about relationships” dogma like it was settled science.”
Josh Cope, Product Manager
Nucor Steel
Some common
personal results
All of those results—business and personal—rise and fall with the atmosphere of trust created throughout the interaction.
And everyone arrives at that same conclusion
Everyone agrees!
Yet everyone also agrees that it’s harder to create trust in customer interactions than it is anywhere else.
But what we miss is why.
And the why is what matters.
Because it has nothing to do
with being trustworthy.
There’s something else at work.
Trust, yes—but not formed the way we think.
In a buyer/seller interaction, trust is shaped by the way customers process the signals we send.
That's not how we normally think about trust. And that's exactly where things start to break ...
We're wired to send signals one way (the Traditional Sales Mindset)
But customers are wired to process them in another
Those two patterns collide
When that collision happens, customers distort our signals—without even knowing it.
What distortion looks like when signals collide
When signals collide, the Atmosphere of Trust is diminished. When they align, it’s created.
That’s why shedding our Traditional Sales Mindset—the Mindset Journey—isn’t about "fixing ourselves." It’s about aligning with the way our signals are processed by customers. When we do that—we break through the barrier.
“We knew trust created results. We missed what created trust."
Greg Fream, President
Schenck Accurate
