One fundamental activity of selling is persuading - the process by which a seller convinces prospects to adopt his point of view for the purpose of converting them into customers.

In order for persuasion to take root during an interaction between a seller and prospect, the prospect must be engaged.  Engagement provides a forum during which the prospect may be sharing information, listening to the seller’s point of view and learning how the seller’s goods and services provide solutions to the prospect’s needs or wants.

Achieving engagement with a prospect is a critical pursuit of all sellers.  We all recognize engagement and its absence as in these examples:

Example #1 – The absence of engagement

I am walking down Marietta Street in downtown Atlanta when a disheveled man catches my eye as I approach. 

He says, “Can I ask you a question?”

I say, “I don’t have time right now” and keep on walking.

The man says nothing further and in a few moments I am well past him.

Example #2 – Instant Engagement

I am walking with a buddy of mine towards the entrance of Philip’s arena to watch the Atlanta Hawks versus the Miami Heat in an NBA playoff game.  Ahead I spy a beautiful woman dressed in a black and red spandex outfit favored by aerobics instructors.  The sun glints off her golden hair.  Her breasts strive to escape their confinement.

She smiles at me and reaches out as if to touch my shoulder.  In her hand I notice a sheet of paper which I take happily as I smile back at her face and her body and just the general aura of her being.

“There’s a party after the game,” she coos.  “I hope you can make it.”

I glance at the paper and there is a picture of her leaning against a life-size mug of ice-cold beer.

My buddy peers over my shoulder at the golden ticket and I hear him suck back a bit of drool. 

“We are definitely going to this party!!”

Most of us are not trying to convince pedestrians to give us money or attend parties but the lessons learned about engagement are directly transferable to our typical sales process.

Lesson #1 - Prospects must believe the seller is credible before they will engage. 

Sellers become credible in a variety of ways:

    -  Borrow credibility from their corporate entity.  
    -  Earn credibility through a reference. 
    -  Assume credibility based on associations (professional, personal or other)

In the case of our spandex attired friend, her uniform and proximity to Philips Arena indicated that she was a part of the Atlanta Hawks organization.  She borrowed credibility from her employer.

Obviously, the disheveled man was not assigned credibility under any of these possibilities.

Lesson #2 - Sellers must be trustworthy before prospects will engage

Trust is achieved through:

    -    Familiarity
    -   Shared Experiences
    -   Attraction

I did not know the disheveled man, assumed we had nothing in common and wasn’t attracted to him.  Therefore, I didn’t trust him.

I did not know the spandex girl but she was attractive and she was obviously connected to the event I was attending.  While I might not have trusted her to watch my kids, there was enough trust to accept the piece of paper she was offering.

Just today, my wife called to tell me a story of a woman who had approached her for money.  The woman was dressed in a tennis outfit and standing in front of the day camp at which my wife was dropping off the children.  The woman approached and told my wife that she had walked up from her house only to discover that she didn’t have her wallet.  Could she borrow two dollars?

My wife noticed her neat and clean appearance (trust through attraction) and her tennis outfit (trust through shared experience).  My wife also reasoned that the woman’s story might be legit because it is unusual for a panhandler to be working the suburbs (credibility based on association).

The woman made the sale and received the two dollars.  She probably could have gotten five!

Trust and credibility are the foundations of engagement.  Stay tuned for another post in which the examples are more relevant to what you and I do every day.  Meanwhile, start to think about how you can leverage credibility and trust to enter into conversation with engaged prospects.