The TRUST Show

S11E2: The Best Salesperson I Ever Met: With Guest Theresa Benson

While the Trust Premium™ research project is ongoing, it seemed like a good idea to interview the best salesperson I have ever worked with, which is precisely what this episode is about. Theresa Benson was the account manager for Apple (yes, that Apple) while we both worked at Texas Instruments. From the first time I met her, it struck me how the Apple iPod team trusted her. It wasn’t until this interview that I realized she probably tripled or even quadrupled my business unit’s profitability simply by being trusted by that Apple team.

S11E1: Trust Premium: The Research Begins Now

In this episode, I'm excited to introduce a game-changing project: Trust Premium. Traditional sales methods no longer cut it in a world saturated with spam and cookie-cutter sales techniques. Customers now buy from people they trust. Period.

My initial research revealed that customers are even willing to pay a premium of nearly 30% for trust. Imagine increasing your prices by this amount without changing your cost structure—resulting in a remarkable 150% boost in net profit.

This isn't just theory; it's a practical solution. I've launched a research project that includes tools, assessments, training, and a fresh approach to building customer trust. And it was never done before. I checked.

In this episode, I’ll tell you all about it. And it’s exciting. Trust me.

S10E12: Ethics, Laws, Values, and TRUST (Revisited)

Recently, I was invited many times to deliver keynotes on the topic of ethics, and specifically my take on the relationships between laws, ethics, values, and trust. Season 9, episode 10 covered the issue, but since then, I had an opportunity to continue and evolve my take on this topic enough to warrant an episode revisiting it. In fact, this is a keynote I’m about to give in three days. In this episode I discussed: (1) the practice of getting the Amazon “bestselling author” designation, and why you should not to it, (2) the ethical bar and the legal bar, and the relationship between them, (3) the erosion of the ethical bar, and finally, (4) how can we stop this erosion.

S10E11: Why Don’t They TRUST HR: The Day that Forever Changed America’s Culture

I truly believe that the HR department is ideally positioned to build trust in the company. I really do. But the first step for HR to be building trust in the organization is for HR to be trusted by the employees. Unfortunately, they are not. A study showed that 75% of employees don’t trust that their HR leader cares about their needs , and only 9% felt their HR leader would advocate for them, while 37% felt HR was more concerned about advocating for the organization.

But why is that? It’s simple: the employees don’t hire, fire, or pay the salaries of HR employees. Management does, and management is more concerned with legal compliance in the employment area than building trust.

And why is that? What if I told you that we have a culture of litigation in whish 2.3% of our GDP is spent on civil litigation, and that the top litigation area is employment?

But what if I told you that this culture of litigation is caused by a single event that happened one night, just over 50 years ago? That question gave me my first TEDx talk in 2018, and after the first part of this podcast episode, I included that entire TEDx talk. The link to the actual TEDx talk video: https://www.ted.com/talks/yoram_solomon_the_day_that_forever_changed_american_culture_yoram_solomon_tedxoaklawn

S10E10: Unlocking Talent: The Ultimate Guide to Hiring Trustworthy Employees

When I delivered a keynote about building trust in remote and hybrid work scenarios, I said, “if you can’t trust your employees to work from home, unsupervised, you have the wrong employees.” Someone then asked me, “how do you hire trustworthy employees?”

When we interview employees, we typically focus on their technical and professional capabilities. Those fall into the “competence” component of trustworthiness. But it’s not enough. Sometimes, we add some of the “soft skills,” but we are often not trained enough to assess those.

Rarely, if ever, do we do anything to answer the question: is this a trustworthy employee? This episode will address: (1) Before starting the interview process, (2) Prework, addressing the “who you are?” (3) First impression, (4) The interview itself, and (5) The relativity of trust—why it’s important to have a team interview.

S10E9: Blue Angels, Top Gun Maverick, and TRUST: With Guest Scott ”Intake” Kartvedt

Do Blue Angels pilots have a death wish when they fly a 30,000-pound jet at 400+ mph and keep 12” from wingtip to canopy? Not really. Are they not afraid? What is the level of trust required to do all of that? Should there be a sign on the wingtip missile rail that says “if you can read this, you are too close?” In this episode, my guest is Scott “Intake” Kartvedt. He flew with the Navy Blue Angels demonstration team, then he flew F35s, and for quite a few years, he has been flying with a civilian Jet team, the Patriots, flying L39s. Oh, and I should mention that he flew planes when shooting the movie Top Gun Maverick and trained the actor in acting while flying in a fighter jet.

Intake will share how trust gets built in a high-performance, high-risk jet aerobatic team and some fun stories from his experience.

S10E8: Win with TRUST, not Low Price: How to sell more, raise prices, and increase loyalty

Several things happened to me lately that made me focus on one of the branches of that work. At a conference I was speaking at, senior executives approached me and said, “That’s all great, but can we sell more with trust?” To me, the answer was clear, “of course you can! And not only can you sell more with trust, but you can even command higher prices with trust and increase customer loyalty!” Actually, the first book I wrote that had the word “trust” in its title, the first one in the series “Can I TRUST You?” had the subtitle “50+1 habits that will make you a trustworthy salesperson.” The other thing that happened was that within days, Thinkers 360 named me one of the top 50 (actually, #12) global thought leaders on trust AND one of the top 50 (number 17) on customer loyalty for 2023. And the last thing that happened was that I saw a significant increase in demand for one of my keynotes: win with trust, not low price: how to sell more, raise prices, and increase loyalty. 

So, in this episode, I will start with some of the higher-level, more strategic perspectives on why trust is so important for sales. In later episodes, I will go “down and dirty” into specific tips about being a more trusted salesperson. 

S10E7: What Horses Can Teach us About TRUST: With Guest Addison Gagliano

When talking about trust, I typically talk about people trusting people. But in this episode, I’ll talk about trust between people and horses, and not only that, but actually what we can learn from this relationship about trust between people. My guest today is Addison Gagliano. She trains kids to ride and horses to be ridden. She teaches the horse to listen to and trust people. We recorded this episode right after Addison gave me a demonstration of her techniques, and I can tell you that it was impressive. At the end of the interview, she told me that learning how to read horses helped her learn how to read people better. Better than many of us.

There was one more thing I needed to say about her… What was it?... Oh, now I remember. Addison is 15 years old.

S10E6: What does “Resume Gap” have to do with TRUST?

Sometimes a candidate would have a gap in their resume. A few years that are accounted for. There could be many reasons for that gap. Should a hiring manager ask about it? It is none of their business? This episode gives advice to both a hiring manager and to a candidate on how to address that resume gap in a way that builds trust, and doesn't kill it. And it uses my relative trust model. 

S10E5: Building Trust in the Spotlight: How to Become a Trusted Professional Speaker

I applied my relative trust model and trust habit process to many different jobs, roles, and relationships, but somehow I never applied it to my own profession: public speaking. In 2020, I gave a speech at the Meeting Professionals International (MPI) annual conference. When I prepared for that, I found a few interesting things: one, I found a CNBC article that, based on a survey, found that the 6^th most stressful job in America is an event coordinator. Two, I conducted my own survey and asked what is the biggest concern for event planners. At the top place, with a significant distance from the second place, was “dependency on other people.” Think about an event planner. Planning an event for 5,000 people (I spoke at events like that). The speaker doesn’t show up. Or delivers less than the 5,000 participants expected, and they keep talking about how the keynote speaker bombed. Do you want to be that event planner? Event planners have to trust the speakers. How can we, professional speakers, help them trust us? That’s what I will cover in this episode.