I Trust You're Doing Well
 

The phone rings. The caller ID indicates a number you don’t know. You answer and the person identifies himself. He follows with “How are you today?” You know immediately it’s a telemarketer and he’s trying to sell you something. That question is one of the biggest signals that the person speaking is a dreaded salesperson. While it’s an awful question for starting a sales conversation, if you knew the real answer, you would have some very useful information for selling. Why? Because the answer tells you if your customer will trust you.
 

Emotions and trust. Trust is to selling as heat is to coffee. You certainly can sell without building trust. It will just take you a whole lot longer and be a whole lot harder. There’s no joy in that. So what can you do to build trust? You can pay attention to how your customer is feeling. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that emotions, both positive and negative significantly impact trust. Maurice Schweitzer, Wharton professor of operations and information management, working with a graduate student reported the results of their research in a paper "Feeling and Believing: The Influence of Emotion on Trust." They found that positive emotions like happiness and gratitude increase trust. Negative emotions like anger decrease trust. Happy participants were significantly more trusting than were sad participants, and sad participants were significantly more trusting than were angry participants. What the researchers don’t know is how long the emotions continue to influence trust.
 

Your customers may think they are rational and don’t let their emotions affect how they judge you. They would be wrong. A customer who is angry after a fight with a spouse has the emotions that are likely to affect how he judges someone later in the day. If you are that person who shows up later to meet with an angry prospect, it is less likely that you will be trusted.

What does this mean for sales? Creating trust plays a key role in sales. When you meet a new prospect you’re trying to build trust quickly. During negotiations if your customer trusts you then you will have an easier time of negotiating. Some salespeople start sales calls by talking about anything that comes into their mind with little thought about what they are saying. They could talk about the gloomy stock market or the news of the day which could be dreary. It’s a mistake to randomly talk or to focus on negative topics. The salesperson can make sure to focus on sharing information that leads to happiness rather than sadness or anger. That builds trust.
 

There’s something else you can do. You can change the impact of emotions on trust. The researchers found that if people are aware of their emotional state, then the emotional state does not generally bleed into their judgments of others. If you know or suspect a customer or prospect is having a tough, emotional day, acknowledge it and say, “Sounds like you’re having a tough day.” If your customer can acknowledge it, he will be less likely to take that unrelated emotion and apply it to you. Recognize your own emotions as you make decisions on trust so you avoid impacting how you trust others.
 

Now that you know about emotions and their impact on trust, is it any wonder that telemarketers have such a tough sales job? They call during dinner. They anger the person who answers. Trust goes way down. No sale quickly follows. If only they could be calling with happier news—and not during dinner.