Good morning everyone, I hope you are doing well learning more and more about growing your sales with these blog posts, the sales process uncovered book, and my keynotes / trainings. Today I want to focus on building a strong relationship with customers and not just making a quick sale. Long term success is what we want to play for, not just a cheap sale. This cheap sale is part of why sales professionals get a bad rap.
Building a relationship with a customer is like dating. If we are not interested in the person, or don’t show interest in that person, we are not going to make it far with the relationship. It is up to us as professional sales professionals to grow the relationships in order to grow the business. This does not mean we have to drop sales price, give away tons of free stuff, or take part in unethical activities.
Instead I focus on the acronym HELP.
1st Get into a mindset of helping prospective customers get to a place they need to go instead of making a sale. We want them to know that if there is anything that we can help with whether it is a location, some kind of product or service that they are trying to learn, or even great restaurants in an area. We focus on being helpful no matter where I can.
2nd Engage in the conversations with customers and make sure we are focused on getting to know them and their needs. Make sure that our attention is focused on getting to know them and their needs instead of talking about us and our products. Take notes of what they are saying, putting our phones on silent and in our bags not on the table, and make sure there are no distractions.
3rd Learn about the customer continuously. I use the house analogy that I have written about in my past blogs and my book. Be constantly curious to learn about customers. Without that focus on learning about people, sales professionals will zone out and focus on just making a quick sale. If we are not focused on the customer we will lose that connection. Make sure to always are learn something new about the customer.
Last thing to remember is to put a priority to get to know the customer. Customers demand priority all the time. If the sales professional is not making it a priority to learn and help the customer, the sales process will stop and trust fades. Without trust, there is not going to be a transaction. Make sure we put a priority on the customer and their needs.
There you have it H.E.L.P. Help them, be engaged, learn about them, and place a priority on them.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom