Rachael Tresch hosts Lending Leadership for HMA Mortgage, and she invited me on her podcast to talk about trust skills.

Three minutes into our episode, she said something I wish I’d put in the book.

She was describing conversations where she barely says anything about herself. She just keeps asking questions. And at the end, the other person thanks her for such a great conversation.

“I didn’t add anything. I just asked really good questions.”

People walk away from a conversation like that thinking you’re smarter. They walk away thinking you’re interested in them. And they walk away trusting you more. She gets it. And that is why her show is worth a listen.

Nobody needs to trust you to buy a pumpkin

Later in the episode I told Rachael that if you’re buying a pumpkin for Halloween, you’re not having a big trust conversation. You can see the pumpkin. You’ve bought one before. You know how it works.

Lending money is different. So is a rebrand, a product launch or a year of media. The client can’t see what they’re buying, they don’t buy it very often, and a lot rides on it. That’s why professionals exist in the first place. It’s also why the client has to trust you before they’ll trust what you know.

Take one: the best rate in the marketplace

So we ran a role play. It’s one of my favorite ways to demonstrate trust skills in action. We started in her world. Here is the scenario: Rachael played a borrower. Her family is growing and they need a bigger house, but they want to keep their townhouse as a rental. She doesn’t know if they have enough equity to pull it off.

I played the loan officer, and I played him badly. Before she finished her first sentence, I was trying to help with my professional expertise: “Yeah, that’s easy. We can make that happen for you, no problem. I must have done this deal 100 times, and I can get you a really great rate, the best rate in the marketplace.”

Every word of that could be true. He has seen the deal before. He probably does know the rate. And despite all that credibility and expertise, Rachael’s guard went straight up. In her words: “I had my guard up because I was like, hold on, you didn’t let me finish.”

She also admitted she didn’t know where she was going with the story yet, which makes her just like a real client. They don’t know yet either. So she did what real clients do and threw me a curveball to test me.

That reflex to answer first has a name, professional self-orientation, and smart people come by it honestly. Right after take one, I told her: “Until you tell me your story, it’s not yet your solution.”

Take two: one question about why

Same borrower, same problem. This time I asked one question before anything else:

“Tell me a little bit more about why you want to keep both properties.”

The townhouse was her mom’s. Her mom sold it to them, and they want to keep it in the family.

That isn’t on any application. And it changed the conversation. In the second version of the role play, Rachael isn’t shopping for a rate anymore. She’s trying to keep her mom’s place, do right by a growing family and not end up house poor, all at once. That is as much of an emotional conversation as it is a practical client conversation.

I asked one more, “What are the questions that you’re carrying?”, then played back what I’d heard and asked what I’d missed. That’s Listen to Learn and Trust Framing in about three minutes. It demonstrated that it’s easy to know lots about the business I’m in. And it demonstrated that I knew a whole lot less about her.

Her verdict on take two: “it wasn’t that much longer.” But it earned more trust instead of putting her back up. So much for not having time to ask.

Same conversation, different desk

Rachael’s listeners sell mortgages. Swap the townhouse for a website and it’s the same conversation at an agency.

A client says they want a new site. Your smartest people have built dozens of them. They know the platform, the timeline and roughly what it costs, and they’re ready to say so before the client finishes the sentence. They’re probably right, too. And the client’s guard goes up. They understand their craft. They don’t yet understand their client. And their client definitely does not understand that you understand.

The second question is where the brief changes. Why now? What’s riding on it? Maybe a new CEO starts in March. Maybe the last agency left them with a site nobody on their team can update. Clients only tell that to people who ask. And give them time to answer.

If you lead the team, ask at your next team meeting: what did a client tell you this month that wasn’t in the brief? Then ask how they found out.

And if you’d like to see both takes run on your own clients, that’s what a Trust Skills Session is for. I play the jerk so that nobody else has to.

Try this in your next client conversation

When a client tells you what they want, ask about why before you say anything about how.

1. “Tell me a little more about why you want to [their words].”

2. “What are the questions you’re carrying?”

3. Play it back in a sentence or two, then ask: “What have I missed?”

Listen to the episode

Rachael’s full episode is on Lending Leadership. The role play starts at about 34 minutes, and HMA posted the full transcript on the same page.

Take the trust skills quiz before you forward this one to your team.