A sales process for a business that sells on trust and relationships

A business that sells on trust still needs a sales process, but one built around the relationship and not on top of it. Leave the conversations as they are. Add a short record of what was promised, to whom, and what happens next. The record is not for the buyer to sign. It is there so that your own team, and you in a year's time, can keep the word you gave.

What goes wrong when everything runs on goodwill?

Nothing, until the person who holds the goodwill is away, ill or gone. Then the buyer says "Ramesh-ji always gave us forty-five days" and the new person has never heard it. The rate, the credit, the favour on a damaged lot: all of it lived in one head and one phone.

Trust is real, and it hides a risk. Promises made aloud get forgotten, remembered differently, or quoted long after the situation changed. A buyer let down by a forgotten promise blames you, not the memory.

Which promises should be written down?

Anything that carries money or time. Leave the warmth alone. The test is whether a stranger who took over this account tomorrow would need to know it to avoid breaking your word.

Four kinds of promise slip away most often:

• Money terms: the agreed rate, what it covers, the credit period and from which date it runs.
• Standing favours: "we take back short rolls."
• Delivery habits: the morning before the market opens.
• Limits: what you did not promise, such as price protection beyond this order.

The last one is as useful as the rest. Write what you declined as readily as what you offered.

What does a promise card look like?

One card per long-standing buyer, kept where the next person will find it.

Buyer: ____            Introduced by: ____
Rate and what it covers:
Credit: __ days from ____ ; agreed by ____ on ____
Standing favours:
Delivery habit:
Not promised:
Last confirmed in writing: ____

"Last confirmed in writing" shows how stale each card is. A card confirmed three years ago needs a call and a message.

For example: a cloth agent in Bhiwandi

Imagine an agent in Bhiwandi who has supplied power-loom cloth on credit to a garment maker for fifteen years, entirely on word. The owner once told the buyer, "If a lot is a shade off the sample, I will take back the bad pieces." Nobody wrote it anywhere.

The buyer hires a new accountant who sees an invoice with a deduction for off-shade pieces and queries it. The agent's clerk, who never heard the arrangement, refuses the deduction. The garment maker, who believes the promise was made, feels doubted after fifteen years, and holds back a ₹42,000 payment (an invented figure) until it is settled.

The agent rings the garment maker and apologises first. Then the promise goes as a line on the card, with its limits ("off-shade pieces against the signed sample, reported within [days agreed with the buyer] of receipt") onto the card, and a message goes to the buyer: "Confirming our understanding on shade." The buyer replies "yes, that is it", with one correction: it applies only against the signed sample, not a verbal description. The payment is released late, and the correction is why the card now says so. The line also stops the next dispute, since both sides hold the same words.

How do you confirm without sounding like a lawyer?

Write it as thanks plus a confirmation. "Thank you for the order, Mr Singh. Just confirming we agreed sixty days on this one, with delivery on the twelfth." Keep it to what you would say aloud. If the buyer disagrees, you want to hear it now, and the correction costs nothing.

Do not send a contract for a small repeat order between people who have traded for years; for bigger credit terms or amounts, check with your own adviser how they should be recorded. Do send a written line when terms change, when the amount is unusual, or when a new person joins the conversation on either side.

Where does the process fit around the relationship?

Add one small thing at each of four moments.

At first contact, note who introduced you; trust travels from person to person, and the introducer deserves thanks. Before the quote, ask the questions you would ask a stranger (quantity, timing, who pays), even when you feel you know the answers. At the order, send the confirming line. After delivery, make one call to ask how it went, which protects the relationship, because the buyer hears from you before they have to complain.

The after-delivery stage is developed in building a repeat relationship after the first batch. If a dealer or agent holds the buyer, read building your own customer list as well.

When does a lighter touch do?

With fewer than a dozen long-standing buyers and one person who knows them all, a notebook of promises is enough, and software would be wasted. The record starts to matter when a second person talks to buyers, when you open in a town where nobody knows your name, or when credit is large enough that a forgotten term costs real money.

The opposite mistake is turning a trust business into a form-filling one. If buyers start to feel processed, you have gone too far. Aim for the smallest record that stops a promise being lost.

Start with your three oldest buyers

Write down, in your own words, what you have promised each that is not on an invoice. Ask a trusted colleague whether they knew. Whatever they did not know goes on a card. The steps around it are mapped in the sales process section; if you want cards and confirming lines built around your buyers, sales process design and implementation is the work, and you can tell us what you need.