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Accellerating Trust: Integrity 1
(part 1 of 3)

Since mankind discovered gold, people have wanted more of it. We dig for it, pan for it, trade for it, war for it. From that desire was born the pseudo-science known as alchemy, the promise to transform the common and near-worthless element lead into the rare and near-priceless metal gold. The alchemist claimed that for a little of your time, attention, and investment, he would supply the necessary know-how to make you rich beyond the bounds of your avarice.

In a way, we are all alchemists. We have the formula to create immense wealth by transforming things common and nearly worthless into something priceless: the gold of trust.

Trustworthy people create trust everyday. The exposure of their character to others over time creates trust. But what if you need to accelerate the process - drastically cut the time to establish trust so that your company's trustworthiness can be understood at the highest level - say the level necessary to buy a whale-sized deal from you? How would you do it? Do you have the know-how, the formula, the alchemist's skills?

We have spent a lot of time recently mulling over, testing, and explaining this formula, and we propose to teach you the alchemist's skills over the course of our next three issues of Whale Hunters Wisdom.


THREE DIMENSIONS OF TRUST

Trust in whale hunting has three dimensions:
  • Integrity (doing what you say you will do)

  • Openness (increasing familiarity on both sides)

  • Investment (the 'weight' of your actions and words as they relate to another)

These three dimensions form the conscious and subconscious structures by which people can experience and measure trust. Of course trust has other dimensions, but these three have great power in a commercial application. They are both independent (apply the principles to one dimension only and achieve results), as well as interdependent (apply the principles in more than one dimension and achieve superior results).

Today we will discuss accelerating trust by accelerating the demonstration of integrity, by which we mean simply the character quality of doing what you say you will do.

In a business relationship, this quality is usually understood between two or more people over time. In whale hunting, time is not in your favor. To be successful in landing a whale-sized opportunity, you often need to generate trust quickly and therefore you must create an incredible, impeccable sense of integrity, FAST.

Follow these rules and you will accelerate your company's perceived integrity:
  • All commitments have equal value. Regardless of the size of the commitment, you get only one credit in the area of integrity for keeping a promise. So, if you want to increase your integrity trust with someone, you can do so by making a number of promises and keeping them. They do not have to be big promises; you do not have to wait for the home-run opportunity. Little ones, big ones - they all count the same. So make more promises and keep more promises. (Actually, little ones are better for reasons we will explain later.)

  • There is no credit without commitment. In order to get credit for integrity, you must first commit to do something and then do it. Good actions get you no points in the area of integrity unless you made a commitment to the person in advance that you were going to do something. No credit for surprises, nice gestures, or value-adds. You may get points for openness or investment, but no integrity points.

  • You can only commit you. You need to make and keep individual commitments in order to develop this trust dimension. However, if you are the relationship manager, you must be absolutely certain that anyone on your team who makes a commitment keeps the commitment.

  • Observe the Rule of Three. Although your "integrity score" increases incrementally - one commitment made and kept at a time - you can lose it much faster. If you make a commitment and then do not fulfill it for any reason, then you may not go back to zero in the relationship, but you do slide back to whatever level of trust you had three commitments back. That's why it's important to build up a reservoir of commitments that you have made and kept. The seas are rough on a whale hunt, and you may make mistakes. So build an integrity base from which to operate. Make and keep a number of small commitments along the way.

  • Increase the frequency of promises. In the course of a business interaction, commitments are made on an intermittent basis. In the sales process, we work with many harpooners who take a "wait and see" approach to their communication with a whale. They may make a commitment for something to happen 10 days from now, and that is the last commitment that they make. In the accelerated trust approach, if you want to increase trust, you have to increase the frequency with which you make and keep promises. This often means taking large commitments and breaking them into a number of small commitments. A meeting commitment turns into a commitment for an agenda, a planning phone call, a confirming phone call, an attendees list confirmation email, and so on.

  • Practice the Multiplier. To multiply the effect of these accelerated principles, teach every member of your boat to practice them with their counterparts at the buyers' table, all without fail and all at the same time. You will create a sensation within the whale of a company that is impeccable at doing what it says it will do. There is a sense of confidence and "buttoned down" execution when you have all your boat members exhibiting these principles in this way.

  • Behavior predicts reality. The most incredible outcome of these practices - making and keeping promises consistently in order to demonstrate integrity - is that you and your team are engaging in behaviors that build your personal and collective integrity. You will create a culture in which making promises to a prospect or customer is considered to be valuable and that keeping those promises is paramount.

You could spend years talking to customers about accountability and the moral value of integrity. But we promise that the commonplace becomes priceless if you practice the know-how and formula that we suggest.

Try these simple principles for two weeks with one whale and tell us your results! We'd like to share your story in a future issue.

Coming next... Accelerating Trust: Openness. In the meantime, please feel free to forward this issue to your friends!


— Tom Searcy and Barbara Weaver Smith





Tom Searcy, The Whale Hunters Company, Large Account Sales, Business Growth, Sales Process Development, Fast Growth Strategies, RFPs, Key Account Management, Current Account Growth, Sales Management, Breaking Business Growth Plateau's, Prospecting System, Business Acceptance Process, Sales Management Development, Big Sales, Big Deals, Deal Coaching, Transform your company, Explosive Growth, Whale Hunting

FOOTNOTE: 1 COPYRIGHT 2006-2008, THE WHALE HUNTERS, LLC, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.