Trust-Based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships

by Charles H. Green

Sales based on trust are uniquely powerful. Learn from Charles Green, co-author of the bestseller The Trusted Advisor how to deserve and, therefore, earn a buyer’s trust. Buyers prefer to buy from people they trust. However, salespeople are often mistrusted. Trust-Based Selling shows how trust between buyer and seller is created and explains how both sides benefit from it. Heavy with practical examples and suggestions, the book reveals why trust goes hand-in-hand with profit; how trust differentiates you from other sellers; and how to create trust in negotiations, closings, and when answering the six toughest sales questions. Trust-Based Selling is a must for anyone in sales, is especially invaluable for sellers of complex, intangible services.

Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 17, 2005

About the author

In college, Charles studied Political Science, History, International Relations and Southeast Asian Studies. He began his career in city management and taught and sold for the Dale Carnegie organization in Chicago. He has also been an owner, executive and manager in a number of companies. He has been a telemarketer, salesperson, sales manager, and has managed vendor relationships and performed contract compliance. As an Entrepreneur he has owned a consulting/training company in sales and communications. Charles’ training ideas have been developed over forty years of working with and training thousands of people of quite diverse backgrounds, ideas and abilities. Over the years he has been involved in a number of Relationship Marketing companies including one in which he was an owner. Charles’ experience ranges from government to business, from the employee level, to management and executive positions to ownership, establishing policies and procedures and ensuring that goals at all levels of the organization are met.

Reviews

[Semi-Academic Eric]

On the back cover: "Charles Green will tell you he's not a sales person. So how has he written a book brimming with such practical selling wisdom? The answer lies in his long history as advisor to some of the best consulting firms in the world. He has distilled this experience and applied it to sales. I learned a lot from this book." – Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling

In this follow-up to his bestseller The Trusted Advisor, Charles Green describes a way of selling that values the relationship over the transaction, builds trust in the sales process, and focuses on doing the right thing for the customer. Trust-based selling explains how to:

Adopt the four fundamental principles of Trust-based Selling

Move from being seller-focused to client-focused

Collaborate rather than compete with your customer

Care about customers for their sakes - thereby increasing your sales and customer retention rates

Develop the perspective that "the relationship is the customer"

[Ash Moran]

Starts with the principle that trust is essential for the sale of complex services, and builds up a framework to make sure the sales process acts in the interests of the client. Goes beyond what people usually think of as "sales", so I recommend this to anybody whose day job is customer-facing. I read Spin-Selling at the same time, which was a useful contrast.

[Sympawtico]

I'm shocked that people need to be told to be ethical in business. This book should be superfluous -- but perhaps it is not.