Relationship Selling

If you have chosen a career in sales the chances are great that you are going to be doing some relationship selling. Unlike knocking on doors and trying to sell items that people may or may not need (meat, candy, newspaper subscriptions, or vacuum cleaners) chances are great you are going to be building relationships. Building relationships is a much longer process than just knocking on doors and trying to gain an order on the 1st or 2nd visit, it will require way more patience from both the salesperson and the employer, but in the long run you will be much better off, both financially and emotionally. I have done both types of selling, and I can tell you from experience that unless you want to be knocking on doors everyday, you will have to learn to build relationships. It’s not surprising that most salespeople hate to cold call? Most companies require it, and it is a must in the beginning, unless your current company just hands you a book of accounts to manage. But over time, if you are really good on the back end, you will not have to hunt near to as much as THE OTHERS.

You might be asking yourself, where do I begin? JUST REMEMBER THIS - Spend your time building relationships with people that will help your business grow. In sales, you are building a business within a business. In other words, don’t waste your time with people that are only going to bring you one sale, unless it’s going to be a huge sale. The above belief can also apply to network marketing, as you don’t want to waste your time with distributors that either or not interested or not motivated to do anything. Think about your product and/or service, and focus 80% of your energy on making sales to individuals that will automatically bring you more sales. I sold over a million dollars in new business a few years back and did this with only a handful of top clients; they made up 80% of my sales. I had an account manager position a few years back with a major software company and had almost 60% of my sales from 2 of my resellers. It may take you a year to build up those accounts but once you do, you will be on auto drive.

Also you should know that the best salespeople aren’t out pounding the pavement every day. That’s like trying to run a marathon a day for 20 days, which is how much time you have in a month to sell your product our service. Don’t ever let your company take away business you’ve developed, always be involved in every account you sell, your long-term success depends on it. You want to make sure that you are being financially rewarded every-time that you make a sale to this customer. I currently have a friend who was the number 1 salesperson for a huge Fortune 100 company and he used to say that people don’t buy his product, they buy him. If you do it right these 5 - 10 customers that you build solid relationships with are going to make up 80% of your sales. Once you build up these accounts you are going to have to spend a lot of your time schmoozing these customers on a regular basis, as you don’t want to lose them to competition. If your business requires you to build relationships you should try some of the following:

¨ Take them to lunch regularly
¨ Drop them by gifts on major holidays, or birthdays.
¨ Make regular visits to their office and say hello (No more than once every 2 – 3 weeks). If your sales are done outside of your local area or internationally, you might just put your top customers in your ticker file and call them or email them every few weeks.
¨ Invite them for a round of golf
¨ You might want to even go as far as sending them on a trip (Only if they are a huge customer)

These are just a few of the ideas I have used over the years to build my business. If you try to sell people every time you see them, or every time you pay them a visit they will probably become annoyed over time. Always beware of the salesperson who understands people, or has empathy, he will build relationships most effectively. The first thing an interviewer should ask a new potential salesperson isn’t how quickly they can get sales, but if they truly care about people. Remember people buy from people they like. If you don’t get a lot of repeat business currently, there are probably 3 things going on: 1) They don’t like you, 2) Your not doing enough of the above, or 2) They don’t like your company. If your product or service is lousy you could offer trips around the world and you will not retain business for very long. If that is the case you might want to fire your employer and go elsewhere, but if that’s not the case just try some of these little things and you might be surprised at what happens.

Sometimes when I take my clients out to lunch I don’t talk about anything but them. Most salespeople love to talk and don’t know when to shut up, so make sure that when you are with a client that they are doing most of the talking. Be prepared, have information on your company, but also have an archive of your own story. Pictures of your family are always great, especially if you are out to lunch with somebody who also has a wife/spouse or kids. I was on a phone call the other day with a potential customer for my network marketing business, and I just let them talk on the phone to me for 30 minutes without me saying more than maybe 10 words. 2 or 3 times throughout the call my potential customer stopped me dead in my tracks and kept asking me what it was I was trying to sell him. It’s a great ice-breaker by just simply letting the customer or prospect do most of the talking and this one technique will set you aside from 90% of your competition. As Anthony Robbins says “Let your prospect design the presentation”. Learn to become a caring person, persist, and most importantly learn to listen and you will have no problem building relationships. It will take hard work, a ton of patience, but if you don’t quit your job, or your company doesn’t go out of business, you could quite possibly have a customer for life, and that my friend is The Sale of the Century.