Your Sales Success is Related to Your Relationship Skills
People buy from people they like and trust. If you break that trust, forget the sale. It's that simple. I work with salespeople in my classes, during coaching or on the road, who have no idea how they show up in a relationship. For example, they walk in cold to a new prospect and start immediately talking about new ideas they could show them, new products... "hey, how about if I bring some samples of new ideas for your business? What do you think?"... no bonding, no questions asking how they buy, nothing personal like simply asking "thanks for your time this morning, what is your name?"... I read in the book Calling by Greg Levoy... "life is to be stirred by a slow spoon"... there was nothing slow about the guy in the example above.
How can you develop a relationship is the question to ask yourself before every call... especially the new ones. The prospect has a relationship with someone selling what you are selling already... unless they are just opening the business, and if that is the case the same rules apply... make developing the relationship the first priority.
When I see customers leave a supplier or service provider, it is usually that the relationship and trust has been broken somewhere. This is the case 95% of the time. We like to think that it was the price or our terms or some other excuse. How about if it was you or your company? Somewhere, somehow, you have broken the bond. Lost their trust. Face it.
The best sales training is one that includes work on relationship skills. Training that helps you see what you cannot see about yourself. I see this in my training classes. I have clients that have been with me 3, 4 or 5 years, working on their relationship skills... how they show up is what I call it. They have improved if their relationship skills have improved. I have one client who could not see himself selling one million dollars or making a $100, 000 income. Today he sells over $3 million dollars for his company and made over $200,000 for himself. It took him 4 years of working on himself to make the difference. He is a different person today than the one that I saw come in my door that first day. HE CHANGED AND THINGS CHANGED.
If you don't like your experience of the world, change how the world is experiencing you... period.
Work on your relationship skills and things will change for the better. Ask three of your closest friends, people who love you the following questions;
- What are the things that you see in me that could be holding me back?
- What are the things that you see in me that are my blind spots, things that I cannot see about myself?
- Describe me as you see me.
After you make this request, write down how you see yourself so that you can compare it to what you get back. Be prepared for a little shock and then get over it and get on with improving yourself.
If you need a little help, call a coach or enroll in a class that has this component added to the sales training.
It works... trust me... oh, did I develop that trust?
Prove this to yourself... work on yourself for five years and write me back.
If things don't change then I guarantee you didn't.
Gratefully yours ,
Steve |
