Trust is built on no-brainer foundations that collectively create an advantage in selling.

Trust is built on mundane actions such as timely and accurate follow-through.  A track record of consistent performance is the evidence essential to creating trust.  The ability to execute, the careful listening which leads to understanding which in turn leads to doing the right thing at the right time is vital.

But there is something else a salesperson needs to create trust with clients and prospects… rapport.  The ability to make an emotional connection based on true, shared interests makes all the difference.

• Not being able to get in touch with your prospect.

• Not being able to move the sales process forward.

• Being told no.

These are cold calling outcomes that can happen no matter how skilled a salesperson is.  Think about how ugly it gets when the cold call is full of mistakes.  Here are the four classic mistakes, along with a few suggestions on how to clean up your cold calling techniques.

• Prepare yourself to dismantle objections.  The first step:  don’t assume that an objection is the truth.  It might an automatic reaction a prospect has to getting rid of salespeople.  Because it works most of the time, the prospect continues to use it.

• Prepare yourself to leave thoughtful, benefit-driven voicemail messages.  If you are not  delivering a fascinating, motivating, intriguing, specific reason to have your call returned, you’re dead in the water.

• Make the benefit statement relate to what you perceive the needs of the prospect to be.  Not sure what these needs are?  Do some more research before making the call.

• Balance etiquette with urgency.  Don’t invite yourself off the call.  Without being overtly presumptive, assume this is a convenient time for your prospect to talk with you.  If you ask somebody if they have a moment, chances are they don’t.

Email has become a great selling tool.  Used thoughtfully, it saves everybody time and helps communicate information clearly.  But in many instances, email is a great waste of time for both the salesperson and the prospect or client.

You are a salesperson.  A prospect hands you a business card and the trap is set.  You either insert the address into a tool such as SalesForce and lose control of the relationship to your company or you maintain the control yourself.

Many control freak sales managers are so bound to the past and a one size fits all school of email that they pound on salespeople to feed email addresses into a system which belches out the same message to different clients and prospects who have vastly different needs and interests.

So, wouldn’t it be great if a salesperson told a sales manager something like this?

“Sorry.  I’m not coughing up my prospect’s email address.  I’m protecting her from your mindless marketing assaults.  I haven’t even told you what her needs and interests are, so what makes you think you know how to communicate with her?”

Unfortunately, this probably isn’t a good way for a salesperson to demonstrate cooperation.  A better route would be to suggest enhancements in the corporate sales email program.  The first might be giving the salesperson control of the email process… allowing the salesperson to determine which emails a client or prospect receives and which ones they never see.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of sales managers who don’t respect their salespeople.  They see themselves as strategic brand managers and they see their salespeople as peddlers who need to be out on the street closing deals. 

But maybe somebody in your organization is willing to listen.  Or maybe you are the sales manager who gets to make the decision on how you use email to communicate with your organization’s clients and prospects.

If so, here are seven good moves to make.

1. Give the salesperson control of what’s mailed and what’s not.  It is the salesperson’s job to know the client. 

2. Eliminate product-driven emails that don’t matter.  But keep the ones that do.  Some clients really want to know about a product change or an upgrade because it directly impacts their relationship with your organization and your products.  Some don’t care.  So segment these emails to make sure you’re communicating only the information that matters.

3. Shake down your unsubscribe functionality.  Make sure it works.  Then go back a month later and make sure it works again.

4. Give your clients and prospects the ability to control how often they hear from you.  This shows respect and by giving control, goodwill is nurtured.

5. If you ask for information when you sign somebody up for email, use it.  Use it not only in how you write the message, but to decide how you’ll segment and send the message to.

6. Pay some attention to when email is best sent.  Researchers with Ball State University have provided data for the Center for Media Design and they have made some key, common sense findings.

Email engagement is strongest in the morning.  People spend the most time with email between 8 and 9 in the morning.  As the day goes along, time spent with email tends to become more interrupted.  Many people will take another look at email between 8 and 9 at night.

The ultimate goal of your email is to have it opened and acted upon.  This can’t happen unless messages are being sent that people want to read.  And people won’t want to read your messages unless they somehow benefit.

When you are selling do you have hunches?  Do just know something will happen, or won’t happen?  I’m not asking you if you’re ready to embark on a career as a fortune teller.  But I’m wondering if you have an inner voice?Sales trainers usually don’t deal with zen-like concepts such as hunches.

But intuition in business is important stuff.  It is a good sales skill to work on sharpening.  Playing hunches is not terribly strategic, and I doubt than any sales training you’ll come across deals with playing hunches.  But this is real-world activity and at least warrants some consideration.

Sales training will tell you that the process of buying and selling is largely emotional.  So why not pay some attention to your emotional inner voice?

If you know what intuition is and how it works, you’ll be in a better position to profit from it.

It has been described as an effortless insight.  When we talk about intuition, we’re usually talking about knowing or understanding without any facts to support or conclusion.  It’s the thinking person’s playing without a net.

Experience can fuel intuition.  The salesperson who has “seen a few movies” often knows from a number of clues that can be patched together how the relationship with the prospect will evolve. 

Careful listening can help shape hunches.  Philosophers such as Immanuel Kant suggested that perception drives intuition, so it goes to reason that careful listening, not just to words but to the subtext of what is being said, the tone of voice, and the overall impression someone is trying to create, will each play a role in giving birth to a hunch.

One sales problem with intuition is failing to hedge a bet.  A strong hunch that time spent with Prospect A which lessens time spent with Prospect B could backfire on the salesperson.  Then again, it could be highly profitable.  A little bit of hedging of the bet is probably a good move.

Before you dismiss intuition as worthless because it isn’t built on a foundation of data, keep in mind that data-driven scientists understand the importance of the skill.  As Jonas Salk once wrote “Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.”

Sales training has a way of overlooking the heartbreak.  And for the great salesperson, nothing is more heartbreaking than a good prospect which simply shuts down.No emails returned.  No phone calls returned.  100% radio silence.

No objections stated.  You made the right moves, things seemed to moving forwaard nicely and then, all of a sudden, the relationship is over.

You wonder if there ever was a relationship.  You think all sorts of dark thoughts.  You second guess every move you made.

You know what?  When this happens, don’t think about what you did.  Think about what your prospect did.  Try to figure out what’s going on is his or her world.

Your time will be better spent balancing your thoughts between what may be happening in the prospect’s world with what you did or did not do than simply second-guessing yourself.

It’s not all about you.  It’s about the prospect and the partnership the two of you are capable of crafting.