Win a Free Copy of The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook Redux

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We’re excited about the early success of The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust. It’s gotten a #4 ranking on The Washington Post Book World paperback bestseller list, a five-star Amazon review, and a growing list of features and media mentions.

Find out what all the hoopla is about―reply by Friday, December 2, 2011 midnight EST to win your free autographed copy of the book. Details below.

And the Winner Is…

Last month we ran a contest inviting readers to tell us about your favorite Trust Tip based on the daily countdown of #TrustTips on Twitter (144 in total from the time we started till October 31, the day The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook was officially released). We listed a few of our favorites, then turned it over to you to share yours.

The lucky winner is Dawna Houston, who gets a copy of the new book autographed by both of us, as well as this opportunity to be singled out on our site (also known as “eternal fame”).

Dawna’s favorite Trust Tip was #TrustTip 8: Trust enhances innovation: it allows people of different views to convert conflict into collaboration.

Dawna observed, “I have watched fear and anxiety absolutely shut down creativity, both personally and professionally; this tip is a great reminder that when we cultivate trust, our minds naturally open and our awareness expands.” Well said, Dawna. Congrats!

Are You Feeling Lucky?

You’ve got another chance to win. Simply take a look through the free download of chapter 1 and tell us how much money Charlie gave the taxi driver. If you get it right, you’ll be entered in the drawing. Send your answer in an email by Friday, December 2, 2011 midnight EST.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Meet Anthony Iannarino: Pragmatic, Insightful, Focused. (He also loves our book.)

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Anthony Iannarino, creator of The Sales Blog, recently reviewed our new book, The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust. Anthony is a thoughtful subject matter expert on what he calls “the new art of sales and sales management.” We’re pleased to introduce Anthony to you, if you haven’t met him already.

Adventures in Selling

Once again proving that my resistance to Twitter is often misguided, Charlie and Anthony first “met” in the Twittersphere, and when I joined the party Charlie suggested I follow Anthony. It’s not the first time Charlie gave me good advice.

Anthony’s blog posts are pragmatic, insightful, and focused. He writes daily on adventures in sales and selling, sales management, the sales process, and what it takes to succeed. But what really resonates for me about Anthony’s posts is the drum he beats about the underlying belief system that leads to success in sales. Some of my favorites include:

When Anthony’s not blogging, he’s juggling myriad roles: President and Chief Sales officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing, a best-in-class regional staffing service based in Columbus, Ohio;  Managing Director of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy, a boutique sales coaching and consulting company where he works to help salespeople and sales organizations improve and reach their full potential; and father of a thirteen-year-old boy and twin eleven-year-old girls. He has plenty to keep him occupied and we appreciate the time he took to read our book.

His review of the book, by the way, is Classic Anthony: pointed and thorough. Read it for yourself and find out what chapters he recommends zeroing in on. And don’t forget to turn to page 205 when you get your copy to read Anthony’s story about when to walk away.

Follow Anthony on Twitter, connect to him on LinkedIn, or friend him on Facebook.

Ian Brodie Takes the Trust Quotient Test: Video Interview

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Ian Brodie is a sales and marketing consultant to professionals. Based in Cheshire, England, Ian’s low-key, self-effacing style belies some deep content mastery.

Ian and I crossed paths years ago at Gemini Consulting, and have gotten back in touch in recent years.  As part of our promotion for The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook, Ian agreed to be a guinea pig and take the TQ (Trust Quotient) Self-Assessment test.

Not only that, but he agreed to share the results – on video! – with TrustMatters readers.

If you’ve been curious about the TQ test, have a look at what Ian (and his wife!) gleaned from it in this YouTube video.

Andrea and I thank Ian for his participation. If you’re interested in the TQ test, you can find out more about it here.

And as long as you’re onsite, have a look at The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook.

Working On Trust: David A. Brock

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To anyone who doubts the power of social media, I tell them how I came to know David A. Brock. Dave’s resume is old-school – IBM, Tektronix – and I have a feeling he’s even (gasp) older than I am, but Dave is all over twitter (http://twitter.com/davidabrock), he writes a fine blog, and he knows the inner workings of WordPress.

Much more importantly – David is just a delightful human being. Generous, warm, self-effacing, quick to pick up the phone, always about the customer. Dave is a superb management consultant.  Nominally, his subject is sales; in truth, it’s about making business and organizations better.  And he is very, very good at it.

Working on Trust

Which is why I’m so pleased that Dave interviewed me and Andrea Howe about our new book.

In the interview, Dave gets the conversation going about the role of trust in sales coaching.  We also talk about what someone can do when stuck in the company of untrustworthy others.  We finish up talking about what can actually be done to make customers trust us (hint: think Bonnie Raitt).

If you aren’t familiar with Dave Brock, please get to know him. His blog is called Making a Difference.  I can attest that he does.

“Consult This” Consults Us

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Charlie and I recently recorded a podcast interview with Mike McLaughlin on the subject of trust and professional services. We covered a lot of ground in 16 minutes, including the one piece of advice we’d each give consultants about building trust with clients.

Consult This

Mike is an accomplished thought leader in the world of professional services. A former partner with Deloitte Consulting, he’s the author of two books (Winning the Professional Services Sale and Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants, in collaboration with Jay Conrad Levinson), the founder of MindShare Consulting LLC, and the publisher of Management Consulting News, a monthly newsletter that delivers practical ideas to thousands of professionals around the world. He also writes another monthly newsletter, The Guerrilla Consultant, which extends the concepts and strategies in his first book.

Mike regularly taps into experts on a variety of relevant topics, and posts his own insightful content on his blog, Consult This. Some examples include:

  • Let Them Take Credit. How, by giving up the credit, you actually earn credit (and more business).
  • What’s in a Name? How the job titles we use on business cards, email signature lines, and web sites convey a world of meaning to others, some of which isn’t helpful.
  • When it All Hits the Fan. Why we should consider ourselves lucky when a client calls us on the carpet for a customer service failure.

We were honored to be among the likes of Peter Block and Peter Bregman, whom Mike has interviewed in the past, among others.

Q & A

Mike asked us some interesting questions. He wanted to know:

  • Do buyers trust professional service providers more, less, or about the same as they did when The Trusted Advisor was published?
  • If you’re meeting a client for the first time, what are the best steps to take to begin to build trust?
  • On the flip side of the coin, what common behaviors do you see that detract from building trust?
  • What do you say to the pushy sales manager who wants you to “accelerate” the sale before trust is established?
  • If you’ve lost trust with a client, what can you do to regain it?
  • If you could give a consultant just one piece of advice about building trust with clients, what would it be? (Charlie and I had different answers for this one.)

Check out his blog post today to find out how we answered.

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn and Twitter.

While We’re in Book Promotion Mode…

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In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re now in heavy book promotion mode. The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook has recently published and we want the world to know about it.

What We’ll Be Talking About

We’ll be posting about media mentions. We’ll be posting about our posts that appear as guest blogs at other sites. We’ll be posting interviews with other authors and bloggers, live and recorded. And we’ll provide links to archived interviews, audio and text.

We hope you’ll share our enthusiasm. We’re excited, of course, and want to get it into as many hands as possible. We believe in our message and we believe that this book is a great tool that will help people gain and master trust.

Trust is more important than ever right now and we want to help people be net drivers for increased in trust in the business world and beyond.

Why We’re Saying This

We want to provide value in our blog posts, and know that event promotion per se isn’t necessarily of interest to you. We hope to keep it interesting by focusing on others; meantime, you can help promote the trust theme.

Because here’s the bottom line. We suffer these days not from too much trust, but from too little – in our politics, our institutions, our businesses, and our lives. We need to do two things better:

  • Be more trustworthy
  • Be more willing to trust others.

The better we get at these two tasks, the easier and better things get done. And getting things done is good for the economy.

And getting better at trusting and being trusted is good for the soul and for the body politic.

Hot off the Presses: The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook

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We are very happy to officially announce the publication of The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust. Published by Wiley Books, it is now being sold at fine bookstores worldwide and online at major booksellers.

Whose shoulders does it stand on? The book’s pedigree begins with the classic The Trusted Advisor, by Charlie with esteemed co-authors David Maister and Rob Galford in 2000.  In 2005, Charlie wrote Trust-based Selling, which squared the circle of trust and sales.

What’s up with the leadership emphasis? Since 2000, the world has gotten flat, connected and linked—trust drives success. The relevance of trust to leadership has increased 470% (our subjective estimate). We connect the dots.

What’s new? Material on creating a trust-based culture; networking; risk-taking; selling to the C-suite; rapid trust creation; leadership. And more.

Why a “fieldbook”? It’s practical, tactical. Loaded with how-to’s. Deals with the nitty-gritty of situations from business development to dealing with untrustworthy partners. It has so many lists it has a list of lists.

Who likes it? Tom Peters, David Maister, Chris Brogan, Neil Rackham, Jim Quigley, and more…

Find Out More

We want to make it easy for you.  You can:

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