Good morning everyone,
I originally wanted to write about my past bloopers for this blog as a funny gift for you, but I had a great conversation with a business owner yesterday that struck a cord with me. He used to own a pretty large company that was sold to an organization with a Chief Operating Officer that said he hated sales people. This COO also believed anything done by sales people could automatically be done through a business transaction.
Golf outings were not allowed, meals with customers were frowned upon, and basically anything that was not a strict transactional kind of relationship was not allowed. I have also worked for companies that the focus was purely transactional and there was no focus on growing relationships that did not have purchase order attached to them. Now I am not just saying you have to validate a golf outing with this blog, but the fact that relationship building is important. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee meetings, fishing trips if they have a boat, etc can work to build that relationship. A side note, I thought I was going to die on a boating trip in the gulf of Mexico on a 19’ boat moving around storms with water spouts forming. So when doing trips make sure you have all the details before you jump in will be important!
This same person also discussed that business school professors from some of the elite universities even teach that relationship building outside of the professional transaction are not a good idea. People that are scholars in theory, but unfortunately not at application I fear.
Some of the most successful business people that I have had the chance to sit with and listen revolve around needing to build the relationship not just on business, but the personal side as well. I have also been able to visit some of my old customers that I have not called on in years and they will smile, ask me out to dinner, and sit with me for hours to discuss the good ole days and where they are at with their current business situations. They even ask for insight on what I might recommend.
These kind of discussions would not have happened had I not worked on the personal side of the business relationship as much as the transactional side. Knowing your customers on a personal level and understanding their dreams and aspirations is a huge benefit. People want to know that they matter and we all strive for community. Building that relationship is extremely important.
It is almost an art form watching an old sales person work the personal relationship and send birthday cards for the customer’s family, as well as celebrating wins that the customer has had. Meetings on the golf course have transacted in large business deals that can not be instantaneously measured. Looking back on the sales process though when reviewed a sales person can say that a certain conversation, or another relationship that he was able to leverage helped him to land the deal. After all sales is a study of people and all about relationships. The transactions do happen, but after a lot of work on the personal side.
I encourage you to leverage the personal side of business along with the professional side. If learning about people was not important than why does Amazon listen in on your conversations and facebook track as much information about you as possible. Facebook recently came into light for the information on the users being used by a presidential candidate for marketing during the last election. With that said, I would beg to differ with the professors of theory and those in management rolls that do not believe in having sales people that engage in personal relationships.
Send a card for your customer’s birthdays, kids birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, etc. I have even been invited to customer’s children’s weddings because of the relationships formed that have landed my past company with new business.
Enough about this, please go make some memories for this Easter break and think about what it really signifies. One person laying his life down for all of us. If that is not something to build relationships I don’t know what is. Have a great Easter!
As always if you have questions, want to dig deeper, or if you would like to ask about other topics feel free to reach out to me at info@kevinsidebottom.com. Also you can comment to the blog to keep the conversation going with other readers.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
Sales and Leadership Enterprises