Have you ever been bothered by a customer that will not buy from you no matter how hard you have tried?
No matter what you try, they just seem to not entertain doing business with you. I know how you feel. I had a customer in Florida that I would literally have to sit for an hour or so before he would acknowledge me. He would talk to his customers about me sitting there as a science project to see how long I would wait. He did not trust me. It took months of working in his area and using connections before he was willing to start engaging me. It was not that I was a sleezy sales guy, but that he did not know me, or trust me.
I had a product set that would enable him to fill in a gap that he had in his product offerings to landscapers, and marketing to help him get more exposure in the area. I was also out meeting with the landscapers, showing them my products and had customers ready to buy. I knew the market, and how to help the customer, but still he did not want to talk to me for quite some time.
Sales people are still thought of today from the 1980 movie Used Cars featuring Kurt Russel. If you have not watched that movie, try it for a good laugh. And no, you do not want to be one of those guys!
I am sure that you are a great person and that you have many friends, but to a customer most of the time they do not know you. Sometimes you get that lucky reference from someone else that you have helped and the customer comes in specifically asking for you. It is rare unless you are doing such a great job in selling that you should also be teaching sales professionals. We want to get to where we have customers lining up at our door, but even Apple took decades before they had individuals camping out for new product releases.
What really helps me to gain new customers is my focus to get to know them on a deeper level and to understand their true needs. If you are just trying to get to know them on a superficial level so you can sell them a product you are that “used car” salesman from the 80’s. In this age everyone wants to feel heard. If you are not really focused on making that a reality for your customers, then you will be that broke salesman I wrote about a few weeks ago.
How do you become a sales professional that has a great deal of repeat business? Its focused attention on the customer and getting to know them and their needs. Today there are so many ways to get your intel on a customer if they are not walk in clients. You have linked in, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Learn about them so when you meet with them you know a great deal of questions to ask them and lower that resistance that they have. I still fall back to the house method that I teach in my programs whether it be the first or 100th time I have met with them.
The focus is to get to know them so that you can help them understand their needs as well as answer those needs. If you don’t get to know them then you will not have a change selling to the customer effectively. What are their interests, passions, goals, and what does success mean to them when they are meeting with you? They will not start to open up about any of this if they think you are just in it for a sale. Play the long game and focus on building the relationship for great success by helping them succeed with you. Keep in mind that this works for business to consumer as well as business to business. People are buying from people so focus on know them!
To follow up with the story about the customer that took me months to even start talking to me, well he became one of my best customers selling quite a few of my products. I have even stopped in to see him even though I do not sell to him anymore as I have changed industries. It is still great to catch up and see how he and the family are doing as well as his customers that I was able to build relationships with as a result of doing business with him. Tenacity is also a part of the selling process, and will be a topic we cover in the future, but know that I worked hard on the relationship building to land that account!
Next week we will talk about uncovering the needs that your customers have so that you can build a great foundation in the sales process.
Have a great weekend!
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom