A college acquaintance of mine that I hadn’t heard from in a number of years emailed me about a week ago saying that he wanted to reconnect and asked for my home address so he could send a Christmas card. Glad to hear from him I promptly responded. A couple of days ago a package arrived with his return address. But rather than a Christmas card it was material promoting a multi-level marketing system. Frankly, it went straight to the recycle bin.
As I type this out I’m trying to get myself to write thoughts like “he’s well intentioned and working to make a living and further himself” because it’s true, but…
I just can’t seem to get past how quickly he killed the sale.
Sales, as a derivative of human relationships, is based largely on trust. Lose that trust and you greatly diminish the possibility of making the deal. I suspect most of us are guilty of undermining trust with a client, prospect, parishioner, donor, or other organizational stakeholder at some point – I am – but the extent to which we practice trust-reducing activities will directly impact the success of the organization. Admittedly, some businesses can get away with a high rate of churning through customers or prospects because of their business model, but in the long run, losing trust negatively impacts even those organizations.
This incident served as a good reminder to me to re-examine my business with a fresh eye toward looking for and eliminating trust-dropping actions that could potentially kill our sales.
Unless they are extremely outgoing (and have a thick skin) I think that the MLM style requires a salesperson to leverage existing relationships in order to succeed. Once a person feels like a means to an end, in any way, trust is gone!
I am not extremely outgoing (more on the shy side) but i have found a network marketing company that paid me over $4,000. the first month. I did not sell anything & personally brought in 7 people. BUT!!!! you can not trick people into looking……..to bad some people give the industry a bad name…..network marketing is now & for some time being taught in major universities. Where else for a $408 investment & not leave my home can you make over $4000 in one month…….The person who trained me was trying to make $10,000 in her 1st month….SHE DID NOT…she made $15,000. so I wonder what he put in the dumpster. Mylee
Mylee- Thanks for adding to the discussing. I'm having some technical difficulties right now with comments not displaying correctly – yours and another new comment are not showing. My programmers are working to fix the problem. Best, Paul
Exactly right. Short term thinking, short term solutions, short relationships life span: business is a derivative of human relationships and any sales approach that fails to build on that and respect it is totally unsustainable.
I once was invited to dinner by a colleague who I trusted and admired. At dinner, I had the same experience as the two guys in the movie "Go" had. They were MLMers who wanted me to not only start buying the crap that they bought (like taking my weight in vitamin supplements each day) but also start hocking it myself. I left the dinner feeling guilty that I was going to have to let them down – and awkward to have to face that co-worker ever again.
As an entrepreneur, I believe wholeheartedly that it's my job to earn the trust of my potential clients and tend to that trust carefully. The key is I actually care more about the results and benefits my clients can have than the money I can make. This attitude serves me well.
Well said and you touched on one of the most important philosophical aspects of trust I believe in and root our business in and that is … our customers make money before we do! A laserlike focus on making your customers successful has the by-product of earning their trust and in time making you more money. Focus on your customers not on the money they represent and remember trust is earned with actions not words.
Sellng to friends always is difficult, especially if there is a recruitment aspect, where you expect them to do things. What strikes me in this example most is the lack of authenticity. The expectation set was that the driver is friendship, when the actual driver turned out to be commercial.
Great thought. If he had been upfront about what he was doing, even though it was a sticky MLM situation, he certainly would have gotten a different response from me. I would have given him the courtesy of listening because of our previous relationship.
Precisely why I choose to stay out of any and all MLM sales. I can't stand the way most of them teach/train to use tactics that make me cringe.
College buddy may come s from a get rich quick mentality. We all have that friend who floats from this to that to the next thing to make his million.
College buddy in the story may be an accountant and trying to get into sales this way, because he was sold and bought the plan. So you still may have to forgive the tactic. You'll know better if you get a Christmas card or not.
Yes, trust is important for any business dealings, most of all sales. But what body of facts is trust of a person properly based upon? If your answer is to avoid "trust-reducing activities" that's not a bad start but the larger question of how to determine whether an action is trust-building or trust-reducing remains unanswered.
Perhaps a topic for a future blog post.
Trust gaining or reducing activities seem to me to fit into two categories: Universal and Individual-based.
As for universal, a focus with the customer's best interest at the center gains trust. Lou Holtz put it well when he said that when looking at their leader every team member (or customer, friend, prospect) has three questions: "Can I trust you? Are you committed to excellence? Do you care about me?" If our actions are such that the person answers yes, we know almost certainly gained at least a portion of their trust. As for determining what reduces trust for a specific individual, which I believe is what you're alluding to, that would certainly be an interesting post topic.
Yeah, he should have a least requested friendship on Facebook first.
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