How To Become More Trustworthy At Work (And Close More Sales)

On this episode of the Salesman Podcast, C. Lee Smith talks about how buyers qualify sellers, how to become more trustworthy at work and how salespeople can use trust to close more leads.

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Featured on this episode:

Host - Will Barron Founder of Salesman.org Guest - C. Lee Smith Author: Sales Cred

Resources:

• C. Lee Smith on LinkedIn
• SalesFuel.com
• Sales Cred By C. Lee Smith

Transcript

Will Barron:
This episode of the show is brought to you from the salesman.org HubSpot studio. Coming up on today’s episode of the Salesman Podcast.

C. Lee Smith:
Credibility or whether or not a person has it or not, it determines who you trust for guidance. What do you look like when someone pulls up your LinkedIn profile? Is it sort of like a dating profile or something like that? “Oh, wow, that seems enticing,” then when they actually get to know you, you’re nothing like what your profile says you are. And then the trustworthiness aspect of it is, do you do what you say you’re going to do?

Will Barron:
Hello sales nation, my name is Will Barron and I’m the host of the Salesman Podcast, the world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. On today’s episode, absolute legendary, enjoy this one, we have C. Lee Smith. He’s the founder over at salesfuel.com. He’s the author of the book Sales Cred. On today’s episode we’re diving into the process buyers go through to qualify sellers. So usually we’re talking about how salespeople qualify their potential customers, their prospects. We’re flipping it on its head in this episode. We get into how buyers qualify sellers. There’s a nice framework to follow to implement all of this. There’s a tonne of value in this episode. So let’s jump right into it. C. Lee Smith, welcome to the Salesman podcast.

C. Lee Smith:
It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

How Buyers Pre-Qualify Potential Sellers and Why It’s Important · [01:41]

Will Barron:
I’m glad to have you on. So we’re going to dive into a topic today which in 700-odd episodes of the show, this is something that we rarely cover, and this is what buyers want from sellers, as opposed to what sellers try and push on and throw at buyers. So with that said, just to set up the scene here, because I want to look at how buyers qualify sellers and if there’s a process, if this hierarchy, if there’s some way we can label some of this in a second. But just to set the scene, which is more important to a sale being completed from both sides? Is it how well a seller qualifies a buyer, or is it the inverse of that? How well a buyer qualifies the seller or salespeople?

C. Lee Smith:
I think that’s the appropriate question to ask. And I think that for so many of us, we have it exactly backwards. Because I think we spend a lot of time talking about, do they fit our ICP? Will they buy enough to be qualified as an enterprise-level client? All these things, and the reality of it is that what’s really most important is, will we get qualified by the buyer? How does the buyer qualify to sell? Or that that’d be me, or you in this particular case. Because if we don’t pass that test, we won’t get the opportunity to qualify them or not because they’ve already eliminated us from contention. They’re already decided they’re not going to return our emails, they’re not going to reply to our emails or return our calls. They’re not going to invite us to compete for the business. So it’s really a moot point at that point.

How Can Salespeople Influence Buyer Perceptions? · [02:50]

Will Barron:
Now, is this something that we’re in control of? And what I mean by that is there’ll be some of the audience listening goes, “Okay, the buyer is disqualified me. Hands up, I’m off to the next individual.” Or is there a level of control? Is there a level of influence that we can sway on how a buyer qualifies us?

“57% of small to medium-sized businesses will research a salesperson online. They’ll check out your LinkedIn profile, they’ll do a Google search before they ever decide that they’re going to reach out to you or communicate with you.” – C. Lee Smith · [03:31]

C. ...