We’re continuing last week’s focus on building trust at a distance because it’s a challenge for so many of us.

Here’s a quick recap of the first four best practices, all of which increase familiarity—a sense of knowing one another—by increasing reliability:

At the risk of stating the obvious, trust is critical for teams, and even more so for teams who collaborate at a distance. In my workshops, we talk a lot about making closer and more personal connections with people, and the question naturally arises, “Is it even possible to build that kind of trust at a distance?”

Looks like I’m on a bit of a roll with the sales topic. That’s partly because the topic is germane no matter what title your business card indicates (every single one of us is selling ideas), and partly because there’s so much really bad advice out there about how to do it.

Everyone loves to buy. No one likes to be sold—not you, and not your clients. That’s for good reason, because “selling” gets a deservedly bad rap. Even in the dictionary, the verb “to sell” is linked to imposing, cheating and betrayal.

It happened again, just last week. We’re on a teleconference call. Charlie and I are the buyers. We’re joined by a salesperson. A couple of our team members beep in and the call officially begins. Sales Guy leads brief introductions for all attending. Good. We exchange a few pleasantries. Nice. Then Sales Guy does the thing I hate most.