High Trust Selling

Todd Duncan

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781418513627
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

Do you feel like your career exists somewhere between your last sale and your next one? Are you always searching for the way to bridge the gap and create long-term success? Does it seem that somehow your life is only about your ability to perform on the job?

For too long you have bought into the idea that the business you do and the life you lead are completely separate. What Todd Duncan has learned in his twenty-two years of sales is the polar opposite: When you discover how to connect who you are and what you are about in your selling career, the results will be phenomenal and long-lasting.

No matter what industry you work in or what type of sales position you hold, adopting the practical principles in High Trust Selling will open the door to a new way of thinking and a life beyond your wildest expectations.

"Long-term sales success happens when high trust exists—when you are a trustworthy salesperson running a trustworthy sales business, and when it's clear to your clients that you are a person of integrity who will not only do what you say but who also has the means to deliver." —Todd Duncan

SECTION I

LAYING THE FOUNDATION TO BECOMING
A TRUSTWORTHY SALESPERSON

CHAPTER ONE

The Law of the
Iceberg

The Truest Measure of Your Success
Is Invisible to Your Clients

Where are you in your sales career? Are you a twenty-year veteran with a few success stories under your belt . . . yet, you rarely feel satisfied with your work? Maybe you’ve jumped from sales job to sales job, each time hoping things will be better . . . but things aren’t better, really. Maybe you’ve just begun your sales career and want to know how to build the right foundation for your future success . . . but you’re not sure where to start. Maybe you’re just considering a job as a sales professional and want to know what it’s going to take to succeed. Or maybe you’re simply tired of mediocre success and are ready for a breakthrough year. After all, every sales professional wants to earn more, in less time, with less stress. Right?

No matter what description best fits your sales career right now, it’s never too early or too late to take your success and satisfaction to new heights. And that begins by following the Law of the Iceberg, something Steven Marshall accomplished early in his career.

In January 2000, I received a letter from Steven, and his words spell out the significance of following the Law of the Iceberg:

Todd,

I’ve been listening to the new Mastery tapes and felt I needed to send you a thank-you note for the unbelievable impact that you and your teaching have had on my personal life.

Obviously, financial increase is the most tangible measurement of success, but I’ve learned it’s not nearly the most important. When I first attended your seminar in 1992, my income was dismal. My tax returns reported a net income of approximately $10,000—lower than a full-time McDonald’s employee. Presently, I earn about $800,000 per year and have over $1.2 million in cash and stocks. I get excited when I think that I went from being heavily in debt to having a personal net worth of over $2 million in just a few years.

To me, however, financial independence is only a small part of success. The true measure of success is being a loving husband and father, being physically fit, being happy and emotionally abundant, and constantly growing and learning. Those are what matter most.

With you as my mentor, coach, and role model, I have defied the odds and set new standards for my career and life. In fact, my life now feels very well-balanced and I have a clear vision for the future. Thanks to you, I feel I have all the resources within me to live my life to the fullest and to realize every one of my dreams. With the momentum I have built, the sky is the limit.

Thank you,
Steven

If every sales professional followed the Law of the Iceberg as Steven Marshall did and still does, there would undoubtedly be less stress, less frustration, less inconsistency, and less dissatisfaction—more motivation, more trust, more money, and more fulfillment in the sales industry. Guaranteed. In fact, whether you’re a sales executive, manager, representative, or assistant, understanding and applying the Law of the Iceberg in your sales career is fundamental to improving both your finances and your fulfillment. It’s vital if your aspiration is greater than merely making a living—if your goal is living your best life.

High trust selling begins for everyone where it did for Steven—by securing your truest measure of success. Because in sales, motives mean everything. Motives dictate your mood, mentality, and moves while serving a client. And motives will make or break you when it comes to establishing loyal, lucrative relationships. The Law of the Iceberg says that the truest measure of your success is invisible to your clients because the majority of real success occurs on the inside of a salesperson, not on the outside. Your fulfillment—not your finances—should dictate whether you are truly successful. “Financial independence,” as Steven wrote in his letter, “is only a small part of success.”

Put it this way: For you to be a truly satisfied, successful salesperson, you must first be a satisfied, successful person.

Think of yourself as an iceberg floating in a body of water. Imagine that the part of the iceberg beneath the surface of the water represents what’s on your inside: your values, your deepest desires, your mission, and your purpose in life; and the part of the iceberg above the surface of the water represents what’s on the outside: your sales position, your earnings, your accolades, and your possessions. Now, if you’ve ever read anything about icebergs, you know that very little of the mass of an iceberg shows above the surface. In fact, experts estimate that on average only 10 percent of the entire mass of an iceberg appears above the surface. What that means is that 90 percent of the mass is beneath the surface, invisible to those above the water. In other words, what you see above the surface is not an accurate representation of an iceberg at all. It’s just the tip. And the same is true of sales success. What’s appears on the outside of your sales career doesn’t accurately represent how successful you are.

Now imagine what would happen if we could saw off the entire foundation of an iceberg beneath the surface. Without its foundation below the water, what would happen to the iceberg? A dense, substantial iceberg would begin to sink until there was enough of it submerged to regain its balance. It would probably remain standing, but the proverbial tip of the iceberg would be much smaller than it once was. And the iceberg would certainly become much less stable, and much easier for the changing tide to displace.

If a thin, fragile iceberg had its base removed, the tip above the surface would probably fall over. And without a solid foundation, the iceberg would become a slave to the ever-changing ebb and flow of the tide. In fact, without a foundation, the small iceberg may cease to be an iceberg altogether.

Most people can discern the difference between a salesperson who is out to make a dollar and one who is out to make a difference.

In similar fashion, without a solid foundation beneath the surface of your career, your outward success as a sales professional will never be stable or consistent—even if you’ve been in the industry for some time. Furthermore, you will always have difficulty establishing trust with your clients because you’re not trustworthy; your motives aren’t right. And most people can discern the difference between a salesperson who is out to make a dollar and one who is out to make a difference. And the longer you try to build your sales career without a proper foundation, the greater the likelihood that your career will come toppling down. You see, true sales success doesn’t begin with the stuff on the outside—whom you persuaded last week, how much you sold last month, what you earned last year, or how much you can afford to buy this year. Like an iceberg, what’s above the surface is not reliable. Lasting success is built with the stuff on the inside—who you are and who you want to become, why you sell and what legacy you intend to leave.

THE GREATEST INHIBITOR
OF SALES SUCCESS

Let’s face it: Many people get into sales in the first place because they want the outward success, the big money, the nicer car, the bigger house. That’s how most sales positions are marketed aren’t they? “Come work for us and we’ll make you rich,” is the common sales-position pitch. A nice base salary with great earning potential. You could make a killing. Oh, and we’ll even throw in a few thousand stock options that could yield millions . . . when the company goes public. I’m sure you’ve heard that message before.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that more money and nicer things are wrong for a sales professional to desire. Who doesn’t want those things? As a matter of fact, material increase is a fair reward for being good at what you do. But when you try to build a successful business solely on the basis of attaining such above-the-surface things, your career is likely to share a fate similar to that of the sawed-off iceberg. It will bob up and down, teeter, and eventually sink or tip over.

For over twenty years I have been interviewing, training, and coaching sales professionals, and the one factor I have found that prohibits salespeople from succeeding more than any other single factor is lack of purpose. Most haven’t answered the “Why?” question for their careers. In other words, the majority of unsatisfied salespeople become that way because their jobs aren’t aligned with a greater sense of purpose. And it shows: in their methods of doing business, in their relationships with clients, and on their faces. The problem is that they’re trying to build their careers from the outside in. They’re looking for inner satisfaction from outward things. But that’s backward. And while the desire for money and material things (or anything else inferior to purpose) can keep anyone motivated early on, when the time between sales starts to grow, it’s rarely enough to keep one afloat.

Let’s be honest. Sales professionals are notoriously gung ho out of the starting gate. We’re self-starters, highly motivated, and highly ambitious. But if time wears on and sales grow harder to come by, it becomes increasingly difficult to remain hopeful and excited about what we’re doing. And eventually, moving on to something new sounds much more appealing than sticking it out. The problem with this path is that in the sales profession “something new” usually ends up being the same old position selling a new product. And the cycle starts again. Excited. Motivated. Ambitious. Maybe a sale here and there to keep the hope alive. But nothing sticks. Eventually our interest diminishes, and again it’s time to move on to something else.

Does that sound all too familiar? Just about every sales professional has taken a lap or two around that track.

But if you’ve been there, as most of us have, and you want to make sure you don’t go there again, I’m here to tell you that there’s a remedy for avoiding that circuitous sales career. It’s called “pull power,” and it’s the essence of the Law of the Iceberg.

THE POWER TO PULL YOU THROUGH

If you’ve never taken time to determine the deeper purpose beneath your sales profession, then your road to high trust selling must start there, beneath the surface, on the inside, before you will ever be truly satisfied and successful on the outside. But once you identify your purpose with regard to success and your sales career and begin to align that purpose with your activities and goals, you create what’s called pull power, which is the greatest motivating force for the work you perform.

To become a successful, trustworthy salesperson you must first know why you want to be one.

Pull power is the antithesis of willpower, which is merely self-generated energy that produces short-term accomplishment but rarely sustains long-term achievement. To exploit pull power in your career you must know why you do what you do. Once established, your answer then becomes the force that literally motivates or pulls you along, in good times and bad, when sales are red-hot and when they’re ice-cold. Pull power is your inner accountability, your constant reminder, from the heart, of the deeper reason you are selling. The problem is that most sales professionals get ahead of themselves. Most spend the better part of their early days trying to figure out the “hows” of their jobs. How can I make more sales? How can I make more money? How will I meet my quota? How can I motivate my sales team to produce more? They’re all questions that have their place. But answering them is not where a successful sales career begins. It’s not enough to know how to be a good sales professional. To become a successful, trustworthy salesperson you must first know why you want to be one.

WHY SALES? WHY ME?

The person who interviewed you for your first sales job probably asked you something like, “Why do you want this job? ” Think back. What was your response? Certainly you didn’t give a surface answer like, “I want to get rich and buy lots of nice things.” You were probably more clever than that, whether or not you really meant it. What would you say if someone asked you that question today? Seriously. Have you ever asked yourself, Why do I have this job? Really. If you haven’t asked yourself, you need to. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not when “things slow down.” Not after you get your next big account. You need to do it now. And you need to be honest with yourself and ascertain more than a surface answer. You need to get down to the bottom of that question, because if you’re just in sales for the money you could potentially make and the things that money could potentially buy, you’re probably not going to make it very far. You’re certainly not going to weather many rough storms. And if you happen to become one of the few who achieve a measure of success despite never establishing a greater purpose, your so-called success will have come at the expense of your inner satisfaction. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. Joe Salesperson comes to me after ten years in the business and wonders why, despite his fat bank account and Benz in the garage, he still feels unfulfilled deep down, as though he’s missing something. It’s a shame. But it doesn’t have to happen.

Please don’t misread me. I have been the frustrated salesperson. I have lost big accounts, or failed to nail them down. I have gone too long between sales. And I have been Joe Salesperson. In fact, it was at that point in my career—when I had the big bank account, fast car, and nice house—that I finally opened my eyes to the damage I was doing by selling solely to attain outward success.

Those of you that have heard me speak may know that I was a cocaine addict for two years. And over that period of time I spent nearly eighty thousand dollars on the drug du jour. On the outside, I appeared to be very successful, and for that matter, most people probably thought I was satisfied as well. Remember, I was Joe Salesperson. I had the fat bank account, the Porsche Carrera Cabriolet, the nice place at the beach, custom-made suits, expensive toys, you name it. But the truth is that on the inside I was running on empty, and my destruction was imminent. Fortunately, I pulled myself out of that pit before it was too late. Or to be more precise, my purpose pulled me out.

It began while sitting on my couch after a...