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Meet the MasterMinds: Andy Wood on the Role of Trust in Selling

Andy Wood is a professor of marketing at West Virginia University, and a former sales executive. Since returning to academia, Wood has studied personal selling, sales management, and the influence of non-verbal communication on buyer trust and sales performance.

Wood recently wrapped up “Buyers’ Trust of the Salesperson,” a multi-year study on the role of trust in selling. We talked to him about how we build trust, and its importance in productive sales conversations.

McLaughlin: What motivated this study on buyers' trust in salespeople?

Wood: In my former career in sales and sales management, I noticed that some salespeople were able to develop rapid rapport and trust with others. So when I went back to get my Ph.D, I already had a natural interest in how and why that happens. But there were all kinds of definitions, speculations, and conceptualizations of trust. This study is a first step in trying to nail down a definition of trust and ways to measure it.

The idea was to look at the sales research and literature related to trust and use a technique called meta-analysis to aggregate it. The project took on a life of its own and ended up taking several years, but we came up with some interesting results.

McLaughlin: Based on your work, what would you conclude about the importance of a buyer’s trust in the salesperson to close a sale?

Wood: Well, there are some situations where the client is dependent on a particular provider and has to buy from that provider to stay in business. The buyer may think, “I don’t particularly like this person, but we need what the person is selling.” Putting those situations aside, I feel strongly that buyer’s trust is the essential element; the salesperson has to gain the buyer’s trust to move a sale forward.

McLaughlin: Does the buyer have to trust the individual, the offering, or both?

Wood: It’s not necessarily clear from this study, but in my opinion it is usually both. The buyer must trust the offering and the salesperson presenting it. I say usually because in some cases, the salesperson is not the one who will deliver the services. Buyers might trust the individual providing the services and go forward with the sale, even if they don’t trust the salesperson. But I don’t believe the reverse is true. That is, if the buyer trusts the salesperson but doesn’t trust the service, I doubt the buyer would be willing to make that purchase.

McLaughlin: It makes sense that a buyer has to trust the service. What if clients had good experiences with a services provider in the past, but a new person from the same firm comes in to deliver the service?

Wood: If the new person is integral to the service and the clients don’t trust the person, I could see them switching to another firm. Even though they had good experiences in the past, it’s such an integrated evaluation that the clients may feel that they just can’t take the risk.

I mean, that’s what trust does: It gets rid of some of the risk in the buying decision. Clients can’t know for sure that salespeople will do what they promise. They have to be able to rely on the word of the other person to do so. That is, they have to believe the salesperson is trustworthy.

McLaughlin: Is there a distinction between trustworthiness and trust?

Wood: I think the two are distinct, but I can’t take credit for the idea. It comes from a fellow named Russell Hardin who wrote about it in his book, Trust and Trustworthiness.

Trustworthiness is an evaluative judgment about a person, product/service, or firm--or all three. We assess the elements that determine if someone (or an entity) is worthy of trust, and decide whether or not that person meets our standard of trustworthiness.

When you put a valued resource in the control of someone else, that is trust.

By contrast, trust is taking action based on that judgment or assessment. When you put a valued resource in the control of someone else, that is trust. Until you take that action, you may judge someone to be trustworthy and still not trust the person with a specific responsibility.

We mix that language up sometimes. I might say that I trust my bank. But would I trust the bank with my child’s care? No. What I really mean is that the bank is trustworthy to handle my money.

McLaughlin: How do the characteristics credibility and compatibility relate to the formation of trust?

Wood: Credibility and compatibility are essential underlying attributes of trustworthiness. To deem a salesperson credible, the buyer must believe that person is honest and sincere, and can be relied on to keep promises. Compatibility means that the salesperson is likeable, approachable, reputable, and shares similarities of thoughts and beliefs with the buyer.

The salesperson’s expertise is so important that it bypasses trustworthiness and goes straight to trust.

McLaughlin: Where does expertise fit into all this?

Wood: The salesperson’s expertise is so important that it bypasses trustworthiness and goes straight to trust. Buyers may like you and judge you to be trustworthy, but if you don’t know your stuff, they are not going to take the actions that signal trust. To earn trust, you have to show that you have subject-matter expertise and deep product knowledge, and that you are capable, competent, and well-qualified on the matter at hand.

McLaughlin: So what you’re saying is that your credibility and compatibility contribute to the perception that you are trustworthy, but expertise combines with those attributes to ultimately determine whether the buyer trusts you?

Wood: Exactly. If you were to eliminate expertise from the evaluation, a buyer might assess you as trustworthy. But in the absence of expertise, the buyer may or may not actually trust you. The buyer might think, “This person is honest. I think I can believe his word. I like him and he is reputable. But boy, he has no idea what he is selling.”

McLaughlin: The sales literature stresses the importance of salespeople being likeable and compatible with buyers. The implication is that unless clients like you, you aren’t going to sell anything. Are you saying that’s not quite accurate?

Wood: At this point, I’m speculating, but I think the reason for that emphasis in the literature is a certain bias in the questions researchers usually ask buyers. When we question them about salespeople, we almost always ask them questions like: “Tell me about the best salesperson you’ve met.” Or “Tell me about the second-best salesperson who calls on you.”

The point is that those buyers and sellers already have existing relationships. So we are not capturing buyer feedback about salespeople who exit the scene before a relationship starts. And I think that may be why likeability and credibility come across as so powerful in selling.

Salespeople who have relationships with buyers have established their expertise or they wouldn’t be there. They already established trust. They’ve demonstrated that they know their subject and they know all about their offerings. If they failed to show that often enough, they would no longer be in a buyer/seller relationship.

McLaughlin: If you have expertise but you don’t really have credibility and/or compatibility, are you saying that you can still be successful in generating trust and then ultimately closing the sale?

Wood: Our study does appear to show that, and it’s a surprising result. It runs counter to the existing literature.

McLaughlin: Of the three—credibility, compatibility, and expertise—do you think one is more important than the others?

Wood: I’d say you need all three because, in the absence of one, it’s hard for the others to work fully in the trust formation process. Take how compatibility and credibility work together, for example. I might think you are honest, but do you have the same value system that I do? Do you think the same way and words things the way I would? If your value structure is different from mine, I may not know exactly what you consider correct behavior. So without compatibility, your honesty may not be enough.

Maybe I like you, think you are reputable, and that you know what you’re talking about. But can I take your word? For me to “buy” your expertise, I’ve got to be able to believe that you really are giving me expert advice.

McLaughlin: Are there common mistakes that salespeople make as they try to build trust with buyers?

Wood: One of the most common errors salespeople make is to over-promise. They claim that they can make more happen than they really can. Once the exaggeration comes to light, it kills credibility. It really damages the buyer’s view of the salesperson’s honesty and reliability. Depending on how mad the buyer gets, it might adversely affect likeability too.

But I think over-promising can also hurt the buyer’s perception of the salesperson’s expertise. That’s because buyers may ascribe reasons to the salesperson’s behavior that call the person’s competence into question. Maybe the buyer thinks that the salesperson doesn’t understand the capabilities of his or her firm, or the capabilities of the firm’s services. If you just say what you think the client wants to hear, that hurts you in the short term and in the long run. Clients always seem to remember when those events occur.

Some salespeople say, “We can do that tomorrow” when actually it’s not going to happen for a week. The idea seems to be—get the order and we’ll figure it out later. When I was in the field, and also as a sales manager, I constantly had to work with people on this because they were so scared of losing an order. And I would say, “You won the battle but lost the war. You forced the buyers into a corner on this order but they’re never going to buy from us again.”

McLaughlin: Final question: If you could give a salesperson one piece of advice, what would it be?

Wood: It would be to really know yourself and your services. You should know about you, the salesperson, as well as about your offerings. That gives you the ability to establish a frame of reference with the buyer that leads to compatibility and respect for your expertise.

If salespeople know their own capabilities and limitations, they are much less likely to over-promise. And then, of course, be honest and dependable.

McLaughlin: This has been very helpful. Thanks.

You can click on the link to find out more about Professor Wood. His study, “Buyers’ Trust of the Salesperson,” was published in the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, vol. XXVIII, no. 3 (summer 2008), pp. 263-283.