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Accellerating Trust: Investment 1
(part 3 of 3)

Not all trust-building activities are created equal. Give me a lift to the bus and donate $10,000 to my favorite charity and just witness the difference in my response! In this third part of The Whale Hunters Wisdom's Accelerating Trust series, we examine the dimension of investment.

In this series, we have proposed the three dimensions of trust:
  • 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)

In Part 1, Integrity, we claimed that you can accelerate trust intentionally through the active leveraging of certain interactions.

In Part 2, Open up to the Possibilities, we discussed increasing the relationship's level of trust by opening yourself up in very clear ways.

Today we present the idea that you can intentionally develop trust through regular, high-value investments in key members of your whale prospect's buyers' table.

When we "invest" in a relationship, we hope to trade some form of relationship capital for a return of increased trust. Relationship capital includes such things as:
  • What we know: gossip, insider's information, "heads-up" insight

  • What we can do: favors, influence, decisions

  • What we own: tickets, cash, meals, co-marketing dollars

Each type of investment has a different level of value, depending upon one's perspective. The other person's perception of value, of course, is the really important one to understand.

The recipient of your investment will make conscious and subconscious assessments of its value. The recipient will also make judgments about your motivation to invest in the relationship. If you want to leverage your investment in trust, we recommend you use these comparative scales as guides to determine what is most valued:
  • Repayable vs. not repayable. When people exchange favors, there is a quid pro quo expectation. If I do something for you, you will do something similar for me. It's what happens when you regularly go to lunch with someone. Quite possibly the two of you take turns paying the check. This has a low value because it is repayable and expected to be repaid. The greater investment is found in those things that can't be repaid, such as a referral's endorsement of your company, tickets to a World Series game, or the introduction of your prospect's daughter to a counselor at your alma mater which she is hoping to attend. The most valuable investment is the one that cannot be repaid.

  • Unique vs. common. Whales want to receive unique treatment. If you provide to your whale only your standard terms, you make no trust investment. This rule applies to information, territorial exclusivity, discounts, and so on. To accelerate trust, the emphasis on value has as much to do with the uniqueness of the investment as it does to your own perceived "weight" of the investment.

  • Pain vs. pleasure. By making a particular investment, have we helped the other person to get something pleasurable, such as hard-to-come-by tickets, a boost in performance, or a reduction in price? Or have we helped them to avoid something painful, such as losing face with his or her boss, receiving a reprimand, or even getting fired? Of these two types of investments, the investment that reduces pain is the more valuable.

  • Personal vs. professional. Trust is a personal thing, as we all know. When we help someone to avoid an embarrassing disclosure, such as admitting to a mistakenly missed yet critical deadline, we make a great big investment in trust. A smaller investment in trust would be helping his or her company to achieve market superiority. This may sound backwards, but in the dimensions of trust, helping someone individually matters more than helping that same person's company.

  • Action vs. Information. In long, complex sales, information is the coin of the realm. For this reason it is easy to get confused about the value of the perceived "inside track" exchange of sensitive information. Salespeople leak pricing, terms, and other key strategic information. Buyers' table members whisper to you your company's position, the issues affecting your standing, and so on. This back-and-forth, back-channel exchange is often thought as real and high-value. Most often, however, it is just part of the whale dance of a complex sale. The highest value investments are action investments: doing something rather than just saying something.

The Fine Line

A fine line exists between truly investing in trust and buying the business or seeking favors. You invest in trust for the long term, not for the deal. The most intangible, least reciprocal, and downright genuine investments will build trust in the most effective and efficient manner possible. You may still lose a particular deal, but the residue of trust you build with the buyers' table will work for you in ways that you cannot fathom.

How to Make Trust Investments as a Team

First, get agreement with your Shaman as to what investments are going to be made into a whale and the members of the buyers' table. Making the wrong investments is very dangerous to your company. We hunt as a team, thus, no renegades should be making their own investments without agreement from the Shaman.

Second, declare each investment as you make it. "Because you are important to me, I am going to do the following for you." There are many ways to do this, but the bottom line is that you make yourself clear.

Third, measure the effect. Behavior is the best measure. If trust investments are coming back to your organization, then you know that trust is being developed. Use the same comparative scale to assess the quality of trust you are receiving. If all of your trust investments are of high value yet all of the reciprocal investments seem low, the whale is telling you something: it does not recognize and value your trust investments.

So, is accelerating trust another form of junk science, the madness of alchemy? Or is it a set of business practices that can transform ordinary, everyday behaviors into pure gold relationships with your whale accounts? We believe that the more trustworthy behaviors your team practices, the more trustworthy your organization becomes.

But only you can say. We would love to hear your stories.



In the next issue of The Whale Hunters Wisdom, we will look at trust busters: common employee behaviors that can inadvertently break the chain of trust with a prospect or a customer. 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.