Facilities provided by essentially trusty salesman (4)
I believe the answer is:
uses
'facilities' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both human attributes as well as being plural nouns.
Maybe there's a link between them I don't understand?
'by essentially trusty salesman' is the wordplay.
'by' says to put letters next to each other.
'essentially' says to take the centre.
'salesman' becomes 'es' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
The central letters of 'trusty' are 'us'.
'us' put next to 'es' is 'USES'.
'provided' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for uses that I've seen before include "'Purposes, functions (4)'" , "Employments" , "Employs" , "What an employer does" , "manipulates" .)