Are Your Customers Confident in You?

We’ve been exploring the specifics of my 5 Sales Tips to Maximize Your Price.

We already covered Sell the Outcome, Not the Activity and Sell the Urgency of the Customer’s Timeline.

Today I want to emphasize the importance of increasing the level of confidence the customer has in you.

The more confident the customer is with you, the more value they will place in what you’re telling them. This is only logical.

Think about it. Would you spend good money with somebody you don’t trust? No! Then why should you expect the customer to?

Confidence is built up in the eyes of the customer by a number of ways, but the one that you have the most control over is YOU!

The level of confidence you provide the customer going into a sale is going to determine the level of profit you make coming out of the sale.

• Does your body language, tone of voice, and presentation skills demonstrate confidence?
• How is your follow-up?
• How are you in handling the customer’s questions?

I’m not asking you to be perfect and to know everything. What I am asking you to do is to be confident in what you do know.

Remember one thing: You might be confident on the inside but if the customer doesn’t see it and feel it, then how you feel on the inside doesn’t matter.

There are any number of ways to demonstrate confidence, but the two I will take to the bank are honesty and commitment. Both of these go hand in hand and are seen not only in your physical actions, but also in what the internet has to say about you and your company.

These also are expressed in what other customers say about you and even in how the other employees in your company act.

I’m not saying it’s the responsibility of others. No, what I’m saying is that you have to control what you can and that’s you.

When the customer has gained a level of confidence in you, they’ll share with you better information. They’ll share with you information not known by others, and in the end, you’ll close the sale at a much higher price.

I’ll end this post by asking, “Why do some people get their haircut for $15 while others get it cut for $100?”

Yes, the quality of the $100 cut is most likely going to be superior, but the bigger reason is the confidence the person has that the hairstylist will cut it the way the person wants it cut.

Had the hairstylist not demonstrated those abilities consistently over time, his or her customers would not have confident in the stylist — and certainly wouldn’t be willing to pay premium price and keep coming back.

So you tell me — Are your customers confident in you?

Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.