Sales manager trust – everyday, all the time, everywhere

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Sales managers must develop the trust of their sales team and help their team members to trust each other.  Trust takes time to create but can be lost in a wink of an eye.

While trust takes time, it doesn’t just evolve over time.  It takes explicit thought and action.   When trust exists, everything on the road to excellence is a little bit easier; without it some things are more difficult and others are out of reach.

Because of all this we are always looking for ideas that can help sales managers do a better job in developing trust.  Recently we came across a Harvard Business Review blog by Carolyn O’Hara.  Although it was directed at employees in general, we thought the learning points were particularly important for sales managers.

So, how can sales managers develop trust?

6 tips to help sales managers develop trust

  • Make a personal connection – If is difficult to develop trust without interacting with the other party.  This can be a challenge on some sales teams because they may be scattered over a wide geography – separate from the manager and from each other.  Here technology can help.  And, the sales manager must leverage ideas like peer coaching, new hire on-boarding programs, and team meetings.
  • Be transparent and truthful – Share as much as you can about the company – strategies, financial results, new initiatives, and performance metrics.  Share why things are happening, as well as, as what is happening – this is important for both good and bad news.
  • Encourage rather than command – Don’t just tell people what to do –motivate them. People work harder and smarter when they are empowered to succeed and empowering requires trust to be extended.
  • Take the blame, but give credit – One of the best ways to encourage high performance and to develop trust is to give credit for successes and own up to your mistakes.
  • Don’t play favorites – This is an easy and quick way to lose trust.  Here appearance matters.  In some cases the sales manager may not being playing favorites by intent but the optics of the situation may project a different image.  Again, this is why communication is so important.
  • Show competence – Trust will not be sustained by just doing all the above.  Sales managers must be competent at performing their own piece of the sales productivity puzzle to be trusted.   This means sales managers must continuously update their knowledge and skills

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Richard Ruff
For more than 30 years Richard Ruff has worked with the Fortune 1000 to craft sales training programs that make a difference. Working with market leaders Dick has learned that today's great sales force significantly differs from yesterday. So, Sales Momentum offers firms effective sales training programs affordably priced. Dick is the co-author of Parlez-Vous Business, to help sales people have smart business conversations with customers, and the Sales Training Connection.

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