Bruce.Fairclough

Relationship Building - Any Value?

I recently read an article by someone that indicated that relationship building, by itself, will not get you the sale.  True enough.  However, after seeing decades of the sales profession being touted as "techniques" that are something you "apply" to people to secure a sale, many of us are now proponents of relationship marketing.  Building business and professional relationships is a starting point to begin the sales process and, more importantly, continuing it into the future.  In the past, sales were primarily based on learning techniques of prospecting, qualifying, and closing.  The theory was that the salesperson who could do more "techniques" stood to make more sales.

Worse yet, because advertising is in your face all the time, we have become very product-oriented, which is not very personal.  Build your widget bigger, faster or more efficient, and you get the sale!  OR... even worse... build it cheaper!  How much marketing today is based solely on pricing?  That, of course, means that if you do have an existing customer, the first offer that comes along that's cheaper than your product/service, then your customer leaves you for the cheaper version! It is my contention that relationship building provides the foundation for the entire sales process and is the glue that allows the rest of the sales process (and all those "techniques") to take place in the first place! 

Exactly what can effective "relationship building" do for your selling?

1) Intro - it begins the lead-up to the sales process
Ever have people just show up to cold-call you in your office?  Worse yet - at your front door in your home?  Don't you feel your work day is being interrupted?  Don't you feel your personal space is being violated?  And then... they want you to do business with them?  Relationship building starts with strictly an introduction... and done under favorable, non-threatening circumstances. At your first meeting, you are beginning a relationship - a getting-to-know you process. That's it!

2) Familiarity - validation and trust
In building your relationship with a prospect you follow it up by sending personal cards, repeated contacts and a process of building trust with you and your company.  The more someone gets to know you and trusts you, the more they reason that you must have a valid, trustworthy product or service and the more likely they will invite you to give them a presentation of what you are offering.

3) Access - get your foot in the door
Building relationships allow you to make a presentation where you probably couldn't even get in the door before.  In more "traditional" (old school?) selling, you look to make a sale right away.  IF you even get far enough to make a presentation at all, it creates a potentially adversarial relationship during that sales process. While you are making your "pitch" your prospect is spending most of their energy deciding whether or not you, your company or your product is valid and trustworthy.  They aren't really listening to the advantages and qualities you may have to offer.

4) More Information - better qualifying
Ever try to present the wrong product or service to someone who has no need for it?  (Then you wonder why the blank stare during your presentation?)  Relationship building reduces this time-wasting process.  Okay, so you claim that you do a good fact-finding process.  But then, does it still feel like you were pulling teeth?  Having a well-developed pre-existing relationship allows you to do a better pre-qualification.  It lets them open up more and share what their needs are.  Chances are you would have already known what their needs were in advance, just by getting to know them.  In turn, you can make a more well-informed presentation and better recommend a product or service that is better-suited for their needs.

5) Knowledge of sales cycle - you know more about them
If you have an ongoing and well-established relationship, you already have a leg up with your client and any future business.  You'll know when their needs change and when a new selling opportunity presents itself.  You won't leave additional business "on the table."  Better yet, it won't allow the competition to gain a "foothold" with your customer.

6) More loyalty - less starting from scratch
Remember the bigger, faster widget?  Well, if you had built an existing relationship with your customer, they would be more likely to let you know when they needed something bigger or faster.  They would be more apt to come back to you for it, rather than start over with a new vendor.  What if they DO find something that costs less?  If they have a rock-solid relationship with you already, they would be FAR less likely to "stray" and go to someone else because saving a few dollars would not be worth the time and energy to get to know a new, unknown provider.

7) More referrals - less marketing
You can be sure that your customers will not want to recommend a stranger to their friends.  They WILL however, readily recommend a trusted person who effectively supplies them with their "widgets."  The result is that you spend less on advertising and get more word-of-mouth business in the door.  And of course, the nice benefit is, the referral already trusts you, you have already started a new "relationship" more quickly, and so the cycle begins again!

So what do we mean by relationship building?  Is it some long, drawn-out process that never allows you to get around to making a sale?  Quite the contrary!  It simply means putting the prospect/customer first as a person - not as an "object" of applying some sales technique!  It means you stay in touch, get to know them better, and that makes it easier and more likely you will be the one they want to do business with!  Develop the relationship with the prospects and customers as people and the business part of the equation will come much easier and more naturally.

Want to learn more about about relationship building with your prospects and customers?  Want some additional ideas how to easily and effectively stay in touch with your clients so they readily send you referrals?  Fill out the form to request more information and I'll be in touch!

 

 

 

Doing the Urgent versus the Important

A friend of mine, Jim Kohn, talks about spending time versus making an investment in time.

This is one of the biggest challenges we hear from people struggling to get ahead these days.  We all have very busy lives, and carving out time for the important things can be very challenging.   It really comes down to a question of VALUES.  In the long term, what is most important to you?

Most people would love to be able to invest $500-$1,000 into a savings account every month to gain some financial freedom for the future, but very few can.  We know we have to "pay ourselves first" when it comes to financial planning for the future.  However, we just don't have that much money left after we pay our living expenses. Many people just spend their money without any purpose - on anything that comes along.  Do you handle time the same way?

Most people spend their life doing the urgent rather than the important.  And there is a direct correlation between the lack of focus on how time is spent and the lack of money left over for the future.  Most people don't "pay yourself first" when it comes the money they have earned, and they don't pay themselves first when it comes to their time! 

So the important question is this when it comes to your time:  Do you consistently do the urgent versus the important?  Are you leading your life by letting outside forces dictate how you spend your time?  Do you live "reactively" bouncing from one mini-crisis to another because all those little "dramas" appear to be "issues?"  Or... do you continue to focus on the big picture - that which is IMPORTANT!  Do you stay on track with small consistent efforts every day to keep working toward the big prize?

It's important to recognize the difference between "spending" and "investing" time or money. Its the difference between doing the urgent and doing that which is truly important.

When my friend Jim talks about "spending" time - he is referring to doing the immediate - the "urgent."  That's SPENDING your time.  That makes it an EXPENSE.  When we SPEND current money on a new toy, there is no return.  Notice the term "SPEND."   We also talk about "spending" time on other pursuits in life:   When we spend time watching television, there is no return.   When we spend time on letting others pull us into their life's challenges, it may have us dealing with the urgent, but it keeps us from what is our IMPORTANT goal.  There is no return on inventment (ROI) in these time pursuits.

Most people fear doing the necessary steps to become successful or financially independent.   In the "Slight Edge" by Jeff Olsen, he talks about how focusing on a series of small CONSISTENT steps each day is what brings true success.   They never keep doing the important small things consistently because they don't see immediate results.  Or worse - they never get started since they feel success would require too large of an over-all life-change. 

So what can you do to "INVEST" your time rather than spend your time?  How can you use time in your favor to make your future better?

One way to achieve future success is to invest time, instead of dollars, on a consistent basis, to eventually generate a stream of residual income.  When we invest time or money, we are giving up something now to get something (much) bigger in the future.  It's what we call "return on investment".  While we can't always invest the money we would like to for the future, we probably can invest the time if we really want to.  And if we invent the time properly, the money will follow!

Consistently investing a small amount of time into a home-based business can eventually pay large rewards by generating a future residual income.  For those who say they don't have the time, what do weight loss gurus teach you to do when you need to lose weight?  Keep a diary.  You become amazed at what you are acutally eating when you see it all down in writing.  Now keep a journal of your time.  Be honest.  How much time can you "carve out" from all those urgent things that are causing you to "spend" your time?  There has to be an hour to invest in your future financial freedom.

Where are you "spending" your IMPORTANT, valuable hour each day?

• TV? 
• Facebook? 
• Meaningless phone calls? (Did you really solve your friend's problem or were they just dragging you down?)
• Texting?
• Surfing the web for the latest e-Bay deal?  (How much did you really save if you lost that hour?)

I know people who have generated 5-digit monthly incomes with an inventment of 1-hour per day in their home-based business.  Now, who says you can't invest in your future?

Invest your time into your future success....

 

Sell on price, or build value?

The major auto makers got into terrible trouble and some had to be bailed out, barely surviving.  Why?  There were many reasons, but one important reason was their marketing strategy.  Their marketing practices had the equivalent of crack addiction - heavy discounting.

This gives an immediate boost to sales, but your customer becomes addicted to it.

• The people who buy most from a promotion are your best customers, who would have bought anyhow.
• People bring forward their buying so there is a slump afterwards.
• You are training your customers to expect bribes.

Ever notice how most insurance companies now bombard you with how they can save you money?  Has anyone stopped to wonder how the 5 or 6 largest companies can ALL save you hundreds over the others?  After all... SOMEONE has to be more expensive than the others.  (By the way, if you listen carefully to the wording there is a "catch" how they can make the claims that they do...)

Studies show that companies who fare the best spent most on positive advertising and the least on discounting.

Think about it. When you spend more on offering deals than explaining why people should want to buy your stuff, you are perilously close to saying "Our stuff is not good enough to sell on its merits at full price."

So, bottom line, don't offer "deals" all the time.  Instead, build value.  If you have a product, sell it on its value - its good qualities.  And then, sell it on its benefit to the customer - not on price, but BENEFITS.  Finally, make yourself the final "value added" part of the equation.  The human element. 

So what is it you are offering then?

• The product or service.  The "What" in the equation.  The good qualities of what it is you are offering.
• The owner benefits.  This is the "why" in the equation.  Why they will benefit from what you are offering.
• The value added.  This is the "you" part of the equation.  The extra value you add that no one else can offer.

In relationship marketing, we focus on this last part, and actually put it before everything else.  Its a process of creating connections - establishing a bond that MAKES the person want to do business with you!  So when the next best offer comes down the road, and they could save a few dollars on a service or product, they don't jump ship because the "value" you offer is something that can't be duplicated anywhere else.

Developing these type of bonds are what build in customer loyalty.  A good analogy is losing weight.  With weight loss, if you go for the "quick fix" and lose a lot of weight right away, you are more likely to gain it back just as easily. 

With building relationships, the "quick fix" is the same thing.  If you advertise offering heavy discounting and new customer purchase based on price only, those same customers will leave you just as quickly for the "next great deal." 

However, if you build long-term connections, your customers become loyal "clients" and stay with you because they WANT to keep doing business with you. 

Another great side-product of building added value is that you don't have to discount your price and you can CHARGE MORE!  You will become more profitable over the long haul.

Build value.  Build long-term relationships, and stop worrying about charging less and being undercut.

Be right or be successful?

I recently read this blog post written by Richard Carlson:  Be Right or Be Happy

In this post, he takes the position that you should shy away from the natural tendency to "correct" people.  In his story, he explains that it is sometimes our tendency to want to correct people - that, somehow, "setting the record straight" and proving someone wrong will make your case and make the "sale."  When you "correct" someone, you make you prove your point and in the end, you "win."  It is his contention that with human nature as it is, proving someone wrong only alienates them and makes them feel uncomfortable.  In the end, when you make your point by making someone wrong, you end up not winning because the person who is wrong feels lousy.

The same holds true in business, sales, networking and in relationship building.

Suppose you are trying to make a point that your product or service should be purchased.  In your enthusiasm, do you "put down" the competition?  Do you take the tactic of saying your "widget" is much better by putting down what they currently have?  When you do that, you are really telling the person that when they made the decision to buy what they currently are using, they were WRONG!  You are, in essence, criticizing their decision-making.

At the very least, you might want to frame your discusion by saying something like, "You made a choice at that time based on the best information you had available to you.  However, with the positive info I can give you now on what I am offering, you might find that you can make a more informed decision to improve your situation."  Its a whole different mindset.  One way you prove them WRONG, and the other way, you are the hero for supplying more complete (and better) information.  Bottom line, be POSITIVE about what you offer, and not negative about what they are currently have or are using - and never put down the competition to make your offering sound better.

Taking it one step further... In his best-selling book "Go-Givers Sell More," Bob Burg suggests that complimenting your competition actually adds esteem to yourself.  It lets the person know you are confident about what you are offering, along with being successful and safe with what you are currently representing.

Same thing holds true with networking and recruiting.  If you find people have misconceptions about network marketing and try to burst their bubble - to prove them WRONG about their misconceptions - you may succeed in proving them wrong, but will leave them feeling bad about their experience with their exposure to your business.  Instead, you may want to approach them sideways - use third party information.

You can explain to them that many other people you know had some skepticism as well, but once these others found out more information, they got past their doubts.  Don't try to prove them wrong.  Be understanding, and offer to help provide them with supporting info that allows them to make an informed decision.

In short, if you try to win the "battle" you will, most likely, end up losing the "war."  While you may prove them WRONG, you'll rarely close the "deal."

Keeping things non-confrontational and be the hero who "drips" on them with better, more complete information.  It may take a little longer, but in the end, you just might be the hero who gives them what they needed to have all along!

Do you want to prove someone WRONG or do you want to be SUCCESSFUL?

 

 

Did you get fired recently?

Has one of your customers fired you recently?  

Everything old is new again.

Sure, its time to get high tech, but its also time to get "high-touch" again when it comes to connecting with our clients.  Anyone remember this old commercial?

Do we settle for emailing and "Facebooking" our customers, or do we really connect?

I have some excellent ideas for re-connecting with your clients.  Ideas that are high-tech, yet high-touch as well.  Don't get fired by one of your clients!  (Or worse, forgotten!)