Jeremy, a sales trainer with 25 years of behavioral science experience, shares seven techniques to build trust with strangers in minutes. Name your agenda upfront to lower their guard, ask a question that makes them reflect on themselves, and leave while the energy is still high. Regulate your nervous system and share a small flaw to invite them to do the same.
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I'm gonna show you how to build real deep trust with anyone within the first few minutes of ever meeting them. See, the reason most people cannot build trust with a stranger has nothing to do with their confidence, their charisma, or even what they say. It has everything to do with what they're broadcasting before they even open their mouth. And that is costing them business, it's costing them relationships, it's costing them deals, leadership, everything. See, I've spent over 25 years studying behavioral science and human psychology, and I've trained over a million salespeople, every industry, including yours. The brain is looking for one thing. Is this person safe so I can lower my guard around them? And most people cause the person's guard to go up and stay up. And that's not something you want. So in this training, I'm going to give you 7 specific trust techniques you can use. Each one works with human behavior rather than against it. Let's dive right in. Number 1, you've got to control your nervous system. Now, why do you want to do that? I want you to understand this and I want you to write this down. The person across from you is not reading your words in the beginning. They are reading your nervous system. Now, what do I mean by that? The brain processes tonality and body language faster than it processes the words of what someone is actually saying, which is crazy. That means by the time you finish your first sentence, before you've even made a single point, the other person has already formed an opinion of you. There are neurons in the brain. These are called mirror neurons that picks up on social cues from the person you're talking with. Could be anxiety in their voice. Neediness in their body language, eyes looking down as they talk to you, constantly talking, trying to show how important you are. These are signals that the nervous system picks up on. When your tonality and body language is communicating, I need this conversation to go well. Does the other person you're talking to feel like you're attached to the outcome? You bet they do, right? You've probably seen that before, maybe with people you've talked to, but it's like a nervous energy that says, I need you to say yes. Like I'm desperate, like I'm attached. And the prospect or the stranger feels that. And when they feel it, what happens? The guard goes up. They go into protection mode. And you've probably seen that before, haven't you? Now, here's the bad thing. Now, once a guard's up, as you know, it's hard to get it back down. And you don't want that because people who consistently build trust the fastest, they are the ones who seem the least attached about where that conversation is going. Now, here's how you can actually practice this. You can record yourself, maybe on a Zoom call, a phone call, or if you're talking to somebody in person, record it on voice memo. Watch or listen for two things. One, does your pace, your voice, does it speed up when the conversation gets uncomfortable? You ask a question for a split second, they don't answer, so you start answering the question for them or you ask it in a different way. Well, what I mean by that was consciously or not, the conversation shifts. Here's another thing you can do. Before any conversation happens, take 30 to 60 seconds, slow your breathing, and generally decide that the outcome of that conversation does not define who you are as a person. For example, like if you're in sales, Who has the problem? Is it you or the prospect? The prospect, right? Who has the solution to solve it? You do. So you don't wanna come across like you're qualifying to the prospect. You wanna learn how to get the prospect to qualify to you because you're the one that can solve their problems, not the other way around. All right, let's go into number 2, and I can't wait to show you number 5 because most people have no clue they're even doing it. Here's number 2. Stop keeping score. Now what do I mean by that? This behavior destroys any trust faster than almost anything else. Most people have no clue they're even doing this, and they come across that they need to win the conversation, right? Someone shares a story, and before they even finish, you butt in with, oh hey, that happened to me as well. Let me tell you what happened. And you tell a better version of that story. Be real with yourself about whether you do this. From the inside, it feels good, right? Feels good. We want to get our point across. We want to seem important. But what does it look like from the outside, the person you're talking to? That you're desperate for attention, that you need the other person's approval, that you're important, and it automatically lowers your status in their mind. And they don't even know it sometimes. Let me give you an example. A rep who's the most trusted on a sales call is not the rep who asks how they're doing today, or how's the weather, or hey, you like fishing, I love to fish too. That's called fake rapport. Most people see through it, as you know, and the guard goes up, and they stay surface level with you the entire conversation, throw out some crazy objection at the end, and you lose a deal again. Sound familiar? The rep who builds massive trust, that's the rep who knows what questions to ask at the right time, but more importantly, with the right tone, how they're asking the question. That causes the prospect to think deeper and internalize their situation from where they are now to where they want to be. Now, that causes them to feel like you understand them, their needs, their desires, their wants, and even their fears. You start to emotionally connect with them. Now, why is it so critical for you to learn? Because people only buy from people who they trust can get them the best result. They do not buy from people who they just like, right? You love Grandma, but you would buy from a complete stranger if you feel like the stranger could get you a better result, right? You like your neighbor who owns the local hardware store, but you still buy your tools from Amazon because you trust Amazon gets you a better result. You don't necessarily love Jeffrey Bezos, maybe you do, but you feel like he gets you a better result. I could go on and on about this, okay? If they like you, that is just a bonus. But they will always buy from the person who they feel gets them the best result. Always write that down. Let me give you an example. Let's say somebody says something you disagree with. I might ask, and it depends on the context, okay? I might reword it differently, but hold on, what, what led you to see it that way? Or what's behind what you just said? Just so I have a better understanding. And the point is, I'm engaging in a two-way conversation to come across like I'm trying to understand their point of view. The point is, stop keeping score. There is no score. There's no you're right and they're wrong. I want to win the war, I don't wanna win just the battle, right? I don't have to be right, I just want to help somebody. When you stop keeping score, you're gonna act like you don't need anything from anyone in that room, and people see you because of that, that you don't need them, that you've got options, that you're higher status. You must be successful, you've got many different options, all right? Let's go into number 3, name your agenda. Now, most people walk into a conversation with a hidden agenda, not a manipulative one, just an unspoken one. They want something, maybe a sale, a connection, a relationship, a yes, and they're dancing around it without ever just saying what they actually want. Now, why could that be a problem for you? You see, the survival part of your brain, which is the threat detection part of your brain, is always looking for hidden intent. Why? Because we all have this 2-million-year-old brain, or whenever God put the first humans here on the Earth, that's debatable, and the brain was never designed for us to thrive. It was simply designed to keep us safe, to keep us in the status quo. When the brain cannot figure out why someone someone is being nice to them. It triggers defensive mechanisms in the mind to keep them guarded, to keep them status quo. Chase Hughes, an expert in behavioral science, calls this agenda transparency. Now, what does that mean? When you name your intent up front, the threat response collapses almost immediately. The survival part of the brain has nothing left to protect against. In a sales context, it's exactly what I teach in an EPQ. Now, if you're not a client yet, NEPQ stands for neuro-emotional persuasion questioning. In certain contexts, giving a prospect permission to say no in the first few minutes of a conversation actually drops their defenses faster than anything else you can do. I'll give you an example of this. Let's say a prospect says, if you're in sales, for example, and I'll show you the examples if you're not. Prospect says in the first 30 seconds of a cold call, "Hey, we already have a vendor we use for that. Why should we go with you?" and put you on the spot. Now, what would most people say? "We should go with me because we're number one with this. We have the best this, we have the best that." Wah, wah, wah, wah. And we try to prove our point by facts and features on why we have the best thing. Which by the way, doesn't every single salesperson say they have the best product or service, the best company in the market? How many salespeople you met that says, oh yeah, we're the 17th best in the market? Nobody, right? They all say they're number one, okay? So they sound like everyone else. So let's say, going back to the example, the prospect says, hey, we already have somebody for that, why should we go through you? They put you on the spot. I wanna disarm them immediately and I'm gonna say something like this. Well, I'm not quite sure that you should yet. You know, we'd have to understand more about what you use now for X and Y and Z and the results you're getting from that just to see if we can even help because maybe you're better off staying with who you already have. Like, who do you use now for your— and you ride into your first NPQ situation question. Now, why does this disarm the prospect where the guard comes down? Let me ask you this. Do you know you can help the prospect? Yes. Does the prospect know you can help them in the first minute of a sales call? Unlikely. Why? Because you have zero trust and credibility right at the beginning of a call. So once you learn how to build the gap from where they are to where they want to be, they feel the pain of the problems, then you can get far more assumptive in that conversation. But your first job is to get the guard down so they feel comfortable opening up to you. Are you getting this? All right, number 4, ask the question nobody else asked them. Think about the last time somebody asked you a question that was so deep it actually made you stop and think deeper about what they're asking. Maybe a question that caused you to like just go internal, like really deep. It was a real question, something you'd not said out loud before. Do you remember the person who asked you that question? I bet you do. You probably trusted them immediately and you didn't even know why. You see, when you ask a question that causes someone to think about themselves in a way that they've not thought about themselves before, their situation before, they connect that moment of self-discovery with the person who created it, which is you, okay? You made them feel interesting. You made them feel understood. And people trust people who make them feel understood far more than people who try to impress them. So write this down. You can use some of these in social situations depending on the context of the conversation. There's obviously gonna be tweaks. I might ask something like this. So what's something that you're working on right now that you actually care about? Maybe something that you would work on even if nobody paid you to do it. Let's say something like this. What is something that you believed maybe 3 or 4 years ago that you completely do not believe now? Just cause them to think deeper. Okay. What's the best decision you made in the last few years that maybe people around you didn't understand why you made it at that time? See, these questions cause them to think a bit deeper. These are just social situation questions you can use. You can't answer those type of questions on autopilot. You actually have to stop and think and internalize what they just asked you. And the moment someone has to genuinely reflect to answer your question, they've already shifted that conversation from guarded to now more open. And why is that? Because you can't be defensive and reflective at the same time. The brain doesn't work that way. The question that makes someone think deep and internalize what you asked is the question that makes them trust you. So stop asking questions everyone else is asking. Ask the one that nobody else has thought to ask. Number 5, follow the framework, not the script. Most people listen to respond. Now, what's the problem with that? They're not actually listening to understand what the other person just said. One principle of NAPQ is this, listen to what the prospect means, not just what they say. That is a massive difference, okay? And what do most people do? They wait for a gap in the conversation so they can say the next thing on their mental list or their script, and the other person feels that. Now, why? Because while you're listening, your energy has already shifted toward your next point. You're already thinking about what you're going to say next, and the other person feels that. Their nervous system picks up on that. It tells them this person is not actually here, they're not present in this conversation. And when the other person feels that you're not present in the conversation, that is the fastest way to kill trust in every conversation. The rarest experience you have with another person is not being heard, it is being felt and understood. And when someone shows you they actually heard what you said, what you meant, not just reflected it back, but actually went somewhere with it, it tells them, this person is here with me, I'm safe, I can trust them. And when people feel trusted, that's when they take off their mask and they open up to you very, very quickly. And they often can't even explain why. When someone tells you something, anything, your default move is what it should be to go deeper into it, to clarify, to probe, to go below the surface, right? Not just to move to the next question in your mind or your script. So try these type of clarifying questions. What led you to that? Just so I understand. Now it's all going to be based on different context, but let's say in a social situation they say something and I might say, what led you to that? Or what happened that brought you to that point? Or what did that feel like when you realized that though? Or what were your thoughts on that? Or What did you mean when you said? See, these are just simple clarifying and probing questions that take that person to get them to wanna open up to you, to go below the surface. And the person who follows that framework will know more about a stranger in 5 minutes than the person who asks them 30 questions in an hour. Why? See, they were in a conversation, not a scripted interview. Think about like Joe Rogan, like his podcast. He feels present, right? He's just asking some different questions. It doesn't feel like a scripted interview, so it goes back and forth and it's natural, and that builds massive trust. Let's shift gears here. We're gonna go to number 6, the vulnerability loop. What the hell does that mean, Jeremy? You see, most people walk into a new conversation trying to show the best version of themselves, right? Showing the credentials, talking about their track record, everything that says, "I'm worth your time. I'm important." Every human being, like I mentioned, wears a mask to shield from the world who they really are. I'll give you an example of this. Amy Cuddy, she's a professor at Harvard, an expert on social psychology. She found in her studies consistently in her research that strangers assess warmth first, competence second, always. Now, what does that mean? When you're trying to prove it, that's the second thing the brain cares about, and it completely misses the first thing, the connection, the warmth. That fake, canned, scripted warmth, people feel it immediately. And they always know the difference between genuine and something that's manufactured. I'll give you another example. Daniel Coyle is a bestselling author who specializes in neuroscience, documented a pattern he calls the vulnerability loop. Now, what do I mean by that? One person reveals something small but real, something that says, I'm human, I'm not perfect, I'm not a highlight reel, and the other person matches it. Each time that cycle completes, the trust deepens faster than trying to impress them with all the great things you've done. I'll give you another example. Research from Elliot Aronson, a leading expert in social psychology, it's called the pratfall effect. Shows something most people get completely backwards. Competent people who reveal a small flaw become significantly more trustworthy, not less. This is crazy. Why is this so important for you to know? Because perfection reads as a mask, and masks make people nervous. It's like you're trying to hide who you really are. Now, I'm not talking about emotionally dumping all your issues and problems to somebody, not oversharing, just small, controlled, real things. I'll give you an example of this. Depending on the context, I might say, hey, just to be real with you, I got this completely wrong the first few years. Like, it cost me a lot. Here's what I actually had to figure out how to actually solve that. Just something like that. Just a little flaw. I got this wrong. Here's what I learned from it. Just little things like that open people up where they feel like you're an actual real-life human being. And when you're the first one to be human in that conversation, the other person always follows. They might tell you something. That's the loop. They might tell you something, a flaw they've had or something that they've messed up in. That is the loop. And every time it cycles, the trust goes deeper. All right. Are you ready for number 7? Save one of the best for last. Leave while the energy is high. The last one, something almost nobody even notices. Most people overstay their conversational welcome. Now, what do I mean? Conversation reaches its highest point, let's say in a social situation, you're talking to somebody, both people are engaged, the energy is good, there's real momentum. You're liking the person, they're liking you. And instead of closing it there, they just keep going. You just keep talking, talking, talking. And slowly the energy starts to go down. The conversation winds down. You start covering things you've already covered, and eventually the interaction just sort of runs out. It just kind of goes flat. And the stranger walks away feeling like the conversation ran its course. That is the last thing they experience, and that is why they don't remember much about you. Now, why do you never want this to happen to you? Give you another example. Daniel Kahneman, he's an expert in behavioral economics, documented something called the peak-end rule. Now what that means is people do not judge an experience based on how it felt overall. They simply judge it by two things: how it felt at its peak and how it actually ended. Which means the stranger's memory of you is mostly shaped by the last few minutes of that conversation, not what you said in the beginning or the middle, but how it ended. Even Machiavelli himself understood this. The leader who withholds is more powerful Scarcity of presence creates pull. Mystery is one of the most powerful things you can ever use. When you feel the conversation is reaching its best point, that is the exact moment to begin closing it down. Not abruptly, intentionally. Let me give you an example. Let's say you're at a networking event. Hey, I love the conversation. I've got to head off to another meeting. Maybe we can grab coffee sometime when I'm a little bit more available and kind of continue. Do you want my number? Something like that. I can do that maybe in the middle of the conversation when it reaches its peak. It says this: I'm busy. I have status. I have options. I'm someone who you probably want to meet more and talk about. I don't need anything from you. When you master how to do this, they feel like they want more. The other person wants more of you. You are a mystery because you didn't give them all of it right then and there where they figured you out. You're a mystery to them. And human beings love mystery. And they love what? Solving the mystery. They will always chase you, and that is exactly where you want to leave them 100% of the time. All right, let's recap the 7 techniques of trust. Number 1, regulate your nervous system before you engage, not after. Number 2, stop keeping score. There is no score. Number 3, name your agenda early, plainly, and directly. Number 4, this is an important one, ask the question nobody else thinks to ask. Big time. Number 5, follow the framework, not your mental script. Number 6, be the first one to be human in that conversation. I can't overemphasize that. And number 7, leave while the energy is still high. Here's what all these 7 still have in common. None of them are about saying the right things. None of them are about being impressive. Every single one of them is about, is this person safe? Can I trust them? So what's your next step? Go ahead, hit the subscribe subscribe button. I put out training like this pretty much every single week. And if you're the type of person who's committed to mastering persuasion and influence and selling, I want you to go to 7th Level U right now. We created this community just for you. We've got thousands of people who are just like you already in it. Every day we go live 3 or 4 times a day teaching you everything on how to persuade, influence, and sell so you can get to the highest level in your life. 7thLevelU.com. You can get the first month for free. Hope that helped you today.
