Industry Magazine Desert Jet Oasis Magazine Fall 2017 | Page 14

REL ATIONSHIP SELLING
RELATIONSHIP SELLING
A sales professional is someone who:
1. Gets business from a prospect who is
already committed to someone else
2. Helps his or her business sources to
reach their full potential
3. Constantly upgrades his or her
clientele
And there in lies a problem. How do you gain
the attention of these attractive prospects?
How do you overcome their commitment to
another supplier? How do you combat their
indifference to wanting to see you?
A core theme of the Relationship Selling
system is that if two people want to work
together, the details won’t stand in their way.
Another key idea is that success with a client
comes by giving “value-added” service. You
accomplish this by delivering more than your
client expected when he or she decided to
try your service.
You become someone’s business partner
because they discover it is in their best
interest to work with you. Another way to
say this is that a sales professional helps his
or her clients be more successful.
Building a relationship starts by
overcoming their indifference toward you
even before your first meeting together. You
shouldn’t call on a probable prospect unless
you have “pre-marketed” yourself.
A good approach campaign, in which
you pre-market yourself, changes the
acceptance rating considerably. Create a
positive image in your prospect’s minds
by sending them helpful ideas and general
market information. The greater the positive
image you build, the greater your success will
be.
Path To Success Professionals never recommend an action
until they have fully determined the problem,
opportunity, or need in the relationship. How
would you feel towards a physician who
prescribed a medicine prior to conducting a
thorough physical?
Sales success begins at the bottom.
Our first objective is to define the highest
value needs of the prospect. To do this we
must conduct a meaningful interview in a
favorable environment.
When calling prospects for an
appointment, or just before reconfirming
the time and place, ask if they would reserve
their conference room for your meeting. Tell When you call on someone, do you “show
up and throw up”? Do you dump product
information on them? We all know that
traditional salespeople talk too much.
Relationship sales professionals listen - and
listen - and listen! A salesperson that shows
up and throws up also should be sued for
malpractice.
Interviewing For Results
“BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP STARTS BY OVERCOMING THEIR
INDIFFERENCE TOWARD YOU EVEN BEFORE YOUR FIRST
MEETING TOGETHER.”
your prospect that you will have some things
to demonstrate, and that the conference
room would be helpful.
Our real purpose is to get the prospect
away from his or her telephone during the
interview. At that time, you will want to
determine four primary things:
1. Highest value needs (HVNs) held by
the prospect
2. Social style of the person
3. Current relationships
with competitors
4. Objections to be resolved
14
Traditional salespeople spend most of
their time on pitching and selling features.
But RELATIONSHIP SELLING focuses on
finding customer needs and problems and
offering solutions to meet those needs. Less
emphasis and time is devoted to aggressive
selling and more to building relationships
and providing value to the customer.
It is suggested that we spend the same
amount of time in an interview as we are
doing now — our emphasis should be on
information gathering and “needs analysis”
rather than pitching features. It is important