As a kid I used to play a game with my sisters we called the “Trust Game”. It was a simple game with a deeper lesson than I realized back then. My oldest sister, Stephanie, would stand behind me, I would close my eyes and fall backwards, allowing her to (and hoping she would) catch me. In the few seconds before I felt her arms catching me, a rush of doubt and fear flooded my mind. However, once I felt her arms and knew I was saved from falling to the ground, comfort and joy overwhelmed me. It was the fear and doubt that, once overcome, produced satisfaction and security.

I had no idea as a little kid with grass-stained jeans and buzz-cut hair that I was actually learning one of the key qualities of successful sales people; the value of trust. In those moments when I was falling to the ground I would go through what many prospects go through during the sales cycle. There are so many fears and doubts that enter the mind when evaluating a particular product or service, and that can be overwhelming. The key to settling those fears and making your prospective client feel safe is building trust. I wish the lesson learned as a kid about trust had stuck with me a bit more, because I forgot about the value of trust when I got older. In my first sales role at a previous company, I was mistakenly under the impression that in order to get people to listen to me and ultimately buy from me, I had to have all the right answers. Let me stop right here and say having all the right answers does NOT build trust. In fact, I found myself making up the “right” answers sometimes, which had quite the opposite effect.

Once I gave up having to have all the “right” answers and committed myself to always being 100% honest and open with everyone I came across, I realized people began genuinely trusting my opinion. It’s genuinely OK to acknowledge that you don’t have the right answer to everything. During this process I even saw some clients change what they thought they needed, in order to match what I was offering simply because they trusted me and had confidence that doing business with me was safe. I found that people were more open to my ideas and were looking to me to provide solutions, even if the solutions were different than what they initially wanted.

My new found focus on building trust began impacting my life in more areas than my career. Not only did my sales increase, my relationship with my boss grew, my friends began seeking out my advice, and even my own parents wanted to know what had changed. I told them the same thing I tell anyone today who asks me how I turned things around: “okay, close your eyes and fall back. TRUST me, I’ll catch you.”