Trust Foundations
This provides the foundation for personal and business relationships.
What is trust?
Understanding this about customers is the first step in building trust.
What are their unique purchasing processes?
This type of purchase involves buying the same product from the same supplier with minimal decision-making.
What is a straight-rebuy purchase?
This occurs when a salesperson's personal values conflict with company expectations.
What is role conflict?
This term describes loyalty based purely on convenience or habit, not emotional attachment.
What is spurious loyalty?
These are the three key components that build trust in relationship selling.
What are dependability, integrity, and competence?
These three phases describe the customer-relationship life cycle.
What are Awareness, Exploration, and Expansion?
This type of purchase requires the most information gathering and involves the longest timeline.
What is a new-task purchase?
This type of loyalty exists when customers stay only because switching costs are too high or contracts bind them.
What is constrained loyalty?
A salesperson who becomes this has achieved the highest level of trust and is seen as a strategic partner.
What is a trusted advisor?
This long-term approach to sales focuses on maintaining customer trust over time.
What is relationship selling?
This type of customer knowledge involves understanding both latent and expressed needs.
What is customer knowledge (or understanding customer needs)?
This purchase type combines elements of both new-task and straight-rebuy purchases.
What is a modified-rebuy purchase?
This organizational approach focuses on production efficiency rather than customer needs, undermining trust.
What is production orientation?
This diagram shows three overlapping circles representing Core Offering, Service Surround, and this outer layer.
What is the Customer Value Proposition?
This term describes when a salesperson is reliable and consistently follows through on commitments.
What is dependability?
Name a technological tool salespeople use to track and manage customer relationships effectively.
What is a CRM system?
Name three roles that might exist in a buying center.
What are initiators, gatekeepers, influencers, deciders, purchasers, and users?
Name an unethical practice salespeople should avoid according to the chapter.
What are misrepresenting product capabilities, withholding important information, making false promises, or manipulating customers?
You're selling to a buying center. The gatekeeper keeps blocking your access to the decision-maker. Name a strategy to navigate this situation ethically.
What are: 1) Building a relationship with the gatekeeper by demonstrating how your solution helps them, 2) Leveraging other buying center members (influencers/users) to advocate internally, 3) Providing valuable information that the gatekeeper wants to pass along, or 4) Requesting a brief meeting to understand their concerns? (Accept any two)
Explain the difference between transactional selling and relationship selling in terms of trust-building.
Transactional selling focuses on short-term trust for immediate sales, while relationship selling builds trust for long-term partnerships.
Describe how a salesperson should adapt their engagement approach during the Exploration phase versus the Expansion phase.
During Exploration, focus on proving competence and building initial trust through understanding needs; during Expansion, deepen the relationship by becoming a trusted advisor and expanding the solution offering.
A hospital has been buying surgical gloves from the same supplier for 5 years. Suddenly, they want to explore options with better pricing but similar quality. What purchase type is this, and what should your sales approach prioritize?
Modified-rebuy purchase. Prioritize demonstrating competitive knowledge, providing comparative information, and addressing their specific concerns about pricing while maintaining quality standards.
ETHICAL DILEMMA: Your competitor has been spreading false information about your product's safety record. You have confidential information that their product failed safety tests. Should you share this information? Justify your answer using concepts from the chapter.
No. While tempting, sharing confidential information violates integrity—a core trust component. Instead, focus on demonstrating your own product's competence through verified data, certifications, and transparent communication. Building trust through integrity is more valuable long-term than winning through questionable tactics.
CASE APPLICATION: Referring to the Pilot Flying J case, explain how leadership's claim of being "unaware" of unethical practices relates to the concept of integrity in relationship selling.
Integrity requires adherence to core values throughout the organization. Leadership claiming ignorance doesn't absolve responsibility—it suggests a failure in organizational culture and accountability. True integrity means establishing systems that prevent unethical behavior and taking responsibility when trust is violated. This case demonstrates how quickly trust can be destroyed and how difficult it is to rebuild.