About this episode

Rowly Hirst discusses the importance of trust in sales and how many salespeople misjudge their trustworthiness.

What does it actually mean to be a trusted adviser and, how would you know if you were one? Most customer-facing professionals believe they're trusted. Their customers largely disagree. That gap is the problem Rowly Hirst has spent his career trying to solve. Rowly is CEO of Relate.US and the creator of Sandy, a generative AI analyst that measures trust in real time using the Maister-Green-Galford Trust Equation: Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy ÷ Self-Orientation. In this conversation, Marcus and Rowly go deep on what trust actually looks like in practice, why the most popular sales frameworks quietly destroy it, and what it takes to become a genuine ally rather than an accomplice, or worse, an adversary. If you spend your days in complex, high-stakes conversations, this episode is for you. What We Cover Why trust is defined not by what someone says about you, but by what they do when they could stay vague, delay, or protect themselves, and choose not to The difference between an ally, an accomplice, and an adversary in a sales relationship, and the precise moment sellers cross the line Why the word "playbook" is the wrong mental model entirely, and what replaces it A…

People in this episode

Host: Marcus Cauchi

Guest: Rowly Hirst

Topics covered

• trust
• sales
• customer relationships
• trust equation
• sales frameworks

Keywords

• trusted adviser
• credibility
• reliability
• intimacy
• self-orientation

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Sandy, SPIN, Sandler, Maister-Green-Galford Trust Equation

Books & works: This Episode

Places: Boston

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