You will be able to use the trust equation to diagnose why a buyer does or does not trust you yet.
Think of two people who have tried to sell you something in the past year. One of them you would happily call back. The other you would screen, even if they were selling exactly what you need. It is unlikely that the difference was their product knowledge alone. Something else made you trust one of them and keep your guard up with the other.
That something is easier to work on once you can break it into parts. The clearest model for doing that comes from David Maister, Charles Green and Robert Galford, in their 2000 book The Trusted Advisor. They wrote it for consultants, lawyers and other professional advisers, and it works just as well for anyone who sells.
Their trust equation says that trust equals credibility plus reliability plus intimacy, all divided by self-orientation. Written out, it looks like this: trust = (credibility + reliability + intimacy) / self-orientation.
Treat it as a way of thinking about trust rather than a precise formula, so any numbers you put into it are rough. What it does well is show you which part to fix. The three parts on top add together, so a gap in one can be partly covered by the others. The part on the bottom divides everything, which makes it the one that does the most damage.
Credibility is about your words: whether what you say about your subject is accurate, honest and believable. A buyer judges it from your answers. Do you know the details? Do you admit when you do not know something, and come back with the answer? Do your claims match what they read elsewhere?
Reliability is about your actions over time. You said you would send the comparison by Thursday, and it arrived on Thursday. You said the call would take fifteen minutes, and it took fifteen. Each small promise kept is a data point, and buyers collect them without thinking about it. This is the only part of the equation that needs time. A new seller cannot have a long record, but they can make small promises early and keep every one.
Intimacy here has nothing romantic about it. It means whether the buyer feels safe telling you what is really going on. A buyer might trust that you know your stuff and that you turn up on time, and still not mention the S$20,000 credit card balance (an example figure) that is the real reason they asked to meet. They hold it back because it is embarrassing, and they are not sure what you will do with it.
You build intimacy by how you react to small disclosures. If a buyer mentions something slightly awkward and you respond calmly, without judging and without pouncing on it as a sales opening, they learn that it is safe to say more. Module 3, Listen more than you talk, is largely about this part.
Self-orientation is how much of your attention is on yourself: your commission, your target, your next line, looking clever. Buyers pick it up from small signs. Steering every topic back to your product. Finishing their sentences. Glancing at your phone. Mentioning your quarter-end. Recommending the option that pays you most without explaining why it suits them.
Because it sits below the line, self-orientation works like a divisor in arithmetic. Strong credibility, a good record and real rapport can all be cancelled by a buyer's sense that you mainly want the sale. Lowering it is often the fastest way to raise trust, and it costs nothing except attention.
When a buyer is not opening up or not moving forward, run through the four parts and ask which one is weak.
Picture Hui Min, a new financial adviser in her first year. Her clients like her and she knows her products well, so her credibility is fine. But she has twice promised to send illustrations "by tomorrow" and sent them three days late. Two prospects have gone quiet since. Her problem is reliability, and no amount of extra product training will fix it. A diary reminder and a habit of promising what she can actually deliver would.
Now picture her colleague, who always delivers on time and knows the products as well as she does, but opens every meeting with the plan he wants to recommend. His trouble sits in the denominator.
Honest self-scoring is harder than it sounds, because most people rate themselves high on everything. Before you start the activity, think of one buyer who did not trust you as much as you hoped, and keep them in mind while you score. Remember that for self-orientation a higher number is worse.
Score yourself from 1 to 10 on each part of the trust equation for your current role and pick the one weakest part to work on this month.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).