EARN TRUST By Changing Selling Into Helping: Practical Tips for Client Development & Networking

In my career, I've learned the importance of earning trust and how one way to attain it is by helping others. HELP: the origin of the word has such meanings as to support, to benefit, to do good, to cure. I like to think of HELP as standing for How to Eliminate Life's Problems. That philosophy has worked for me, and I think it is good advice for others, no matter your profession or career. Some problems and situations covered in this book are ones most professionals contend with, including:

• Just not enough time to do what needs to be done.
• Being uncomfortable/unsure about how to interact with clients in a business development setting.
• Client discussions about your competition and how you are different.
• Overcoming complacency or just plain laziness.
• Handling the confusion resulting from a crisis or confrontation.
• Uncertainty about a direction or action to take.

This is a business book about furthering your career, which presumably, and naturally, also means making more money and becoming more secure professionally. Within this book, I use HELP as a means by which you discover how it-helping-is an excellent path to earning trust. And that is a cornerstone to better 'selling.' It is a guidebook for mid-career and experienced professionals to create a valuable network and develop new business opportunities for themselves and the companies that employ them.

-Jim Barratt