I love what John Maxwell said, “When you MAKE a commitment, you create hope. When you KEEP a commitment, you create trust.”

In organizations we sometimes forget the DIFFERENCE between these two.  Remember my earlier blog on Nov. 23rd about the company that invested all this money in their symposium only to not see the return on their investment?  I shared with you one thing we helped them do that rocketed sales.

Here is the rest of the story- This company was notorious for launching new products but not being able to meet the delivery dates they set.  They would get clients excited by making the commitment to deliver and then would lose trust when they weren’t able to actually deliver.

So we made them address that issue at the symposium.  I knew that if people were going to commit to orders they had to know that the product would be there when they wanted.

By the time we were doing doing our TRUST FACTOR questions, we had delivery dates that were on AVERAGE 4 months out from what the delivery dates they originally wanted to quote.  As you can imagine they struggled with the new dates we made them commit to.  They were afraid that clients would lose interest if the product wasn’t going to be immediately or shortly available.  So they reluctantly agreed to try this.

The CEO actually apologized for the delays they have had in the past.  He committed to them that the new dates they would deliver right on time no excuses.  So he explained they wanted to earn trust back and how they were going to do it.

Well, the audience loved it!  Of course, at this point the commitment was a HOPE for the audience but once they delivered on the new dates that HOPE became TRUST.

Look at areas in your company where you create HOPE but not TRUST.  Broken promises create hope and then frustration as the trust is lost.

Your trustworthiness is a reflection of your character.  Guard it well.

Find out more about what makes our Corporate Sales Training different and how to become a trusted partner: /solutions/increase-your-sales