|
If both you and your client expect to reach
even greater levels of success, then you must have a strong and harmonious relationship
between the two of you. Building and maintaining that relationship can take an enormous
chunk of a sales professional's time and effort! Here’s some advice on how to really
make that investment pay off.
Why More Than Just Relationship Building is Key to Your Success
What skill do you feel is more important to sales success consultative selling or
relationship building? Most people answer relationship building. I disagree! I believe
consultative selling creates the foundation from which profitable relationships are born.
Did you ever lose business … despite a relationship you thought was solid? If
you’re like most of the people I work with, the answer is "yes."
Relationships will get you the appointment, but the consultative selling approach will get
you the business. Once you stop acting in the consultative selling mode, you start taking
the relationship for granted. You stop doing some of the things that made you invaluable
the things that got you the business in the first place.
How do you build a relationship around the consultative selling approach? First, you must
realize that when I use the word "relationship," I’m not talking about
"schmoozing" your clients. I’m talking about creating a kind of
relationship that instills trust and confidence in what you can do for them. I’m
talking about concentrated effort that goes into finding out what your clients need and
how you can best deliver it to them. I'm talking about giving your clients the best
overall value for the money they're investing.
Most of all, I'm talking about positioning yourself so that you can be the most invaluable
resource your clients have. This is true whether you're tending to a current business
relationship or prospecting for new clients.
During an initial interview, you have very little time to capture the attention of your
prospective client. You must quickly send the ‘right’ signals about what you can
do for him or her. Therefore, you have to make a positive impact at the very beginning you
must make your prospect sit up, take notice, and quickly conclude that you are like no
other sales professional he or she has ever met before. You do this by positioning
yourself as an invaluable resource.
You can’t position yourself as an invaluable resource by title (sales professional)
or product (insurance, computers, on line services, etc). Positioning by these two methods
only puts you in the same arena with all other sales professionals and no differentiating
value. Instead, you must make it clear that you can help deliver at least one of these
four outcomes:
- Increase profits. In other words, you must show how working with you will help
your clients attain profits and profits, after all, are what supports the person’s
lifestyle goals!
- Increase productivity. You must show how working with you will save your client
time and money through the services you have to offer.
- Reduce costs. You must show how working with you cost your clients less money
overall than working with your competition. The key word here is cost, not price. Your
fees may be higher, but at the end of the day, if your clients realized a reduction in the
overall costs they incurred in attaining their goals, you’re a better value. Costs
include time, money and level of frustration.
- Increased competitive advantage- For commercial clients, this includes helping
your clients maintain the competitive advantage by providing them with desired levels of
return on investment -- and providing their employees with benefit plans that make them
want to stay.
The Titan Principle Now that you know what you need to do to position yourself
as an invaluable resource, how do you do it? Many people think clients only want the
lowest price available. While price is an issue, it is not the driving issue in most
cases. Clients want to be heard and understood!
Here are seven ways to send that message and position yourself as an invaluable
resource:
1. Create and Use a Resource Proclamation
To gain a client’s attention, you must first focus on the results you offer your
clients, not on your services. The results constitute the "what"what your
clients can expect from a relationship with you. Your services constitute the
"how"how you are going to help them get those results.
You need a Resource Proclamation-- a statement you make that sets you apart from
all other sales professionals and tells clients more about who you are than any title
could ever do. A Resource Proclamation outlines what you have to offer your client in a
simple and direct manner. For example:
"I help clients achieve their life's goals through investments."
"I am a Life Advisor who specializes in money." This example is taken from Bill
Bachrach’s Values-Based Selling book.
Now, doesn’t this sound more interesting and powerful than saying "I’m a
sales professional" when someone asks what you do for a living?
A Resource Proclamation should …
- Communicate the "what." Your proclamation should convey the bottom-line
benefits and value your client will gain from a relationship with you, and should prompt
your client to ask you for more information
- Be simple. Potential clients don't want to waste time listening to as long,
drawn-out pitch.
- Be memorable. Your Resource Proclamation must be strong enough to create a
lasting impression that someone will be able to communicate easily to others.
2. Use Effective Questioning
The questions you ask of your prospects and clients comprise the most powerful tool you
can use in positioning yourself as a resource, because they get the other person mentally
and physically involved with you. The more you actively engage him or her in the process
through effective questioning, the more they will trust and respect your judgment and
abilities.
The right questions allow you, within a brief period of time, to send an essential message
to your prospect or client early on in the relationship. The most effective type of
questioning focuses on issues. Your client has challenges that need to be met, and issues
that need to be addressed. By zeroing in on those concerns, you are much more likely to
hold that person's attention and demonstrate that you can and will "be there"
for him or her, and will turn their goals into realities. One of the best ways you can
preface such questions is by using the words "Please describe.…"
Good questioning breaks barriers. With existing clients, effective questioning makes it
possible to identify other areas where you may further serve as a resource.
3. Know Where Your Clients Are Going and How They Want to Get There
You are a partner in the achievement of your clients' goals. The minute you cease to be
vigilant about what they want and need, you run the risk of losing them to someone else
who will be more responsive to their needs or will do a better job of helping them reach
their goals. Your objective is to serve as your client's "roadmap" by taking the
initiative on his or her behalf.
4. Identify and Focus on the Value Proposition
Your goal as a sales professional is to become a value-added partner in the achievement of
your clients' goals. In essence, you have to prove to your clients that you are their best
resource getting them where they want to be. This means focusing on the value proposition
that helps clients reach their goals, thus attracting new clients and keeping existing
clients happy.
What is a value proposition? It’s a way of creating unique value for your
client's investment by creating a mixture of key elements:
- Information: The knowledge you possess about the events and trends in areas of
most interest or concern to your client.
- Support: Your ability to provide the right kind of support, electronic or
otherwise, to best service your clients' needs.
- Stability: The strengths you possess that provide additional comfort and value to
your clients -- that is, what sets you apart from the competition.
- Service: Your ability to set up and implement superior solutions.
- Assets: Critical financial, technical, or interpersonal tools you can make
available to clients in key situations.
5. Understand the Decision-Making Process
You must acclimate yourself to the other person's way of thinking, so that
you’re better able to understand and anticipate what will be needed to provide the
best overall solutions.
Asking key questions of your prospect or client will help you to determine how he or she
goes about making decisions and what effect that may have on the solutions you have to
offer. By learning what issues affect your client's decision-making processes, you can
appeal directly to those issues -- and no others. You can help to guide clients in their
decision-making through issues-based questions that essentially answer one key question:
"Where is this person trying to go and how is that destination likely to affect the
decisions he or she is making?" Often, the client may be uncertain of his or her
direction, which makes your guidance all the more valuable as they attempt to reach an
informed decision.
What you learn about how a client makes decisions will tell you what goals and values are
most important to that person, which in turn helps you to shape your communications and
your solutions to those goals and values.
6. Monitor Client Wants and Needs at All Times
The principles involved in positioning yourself as a resource for prospects do not
disappear once he or she becomes a client. You should be a resource at all times, not just
when you are trying to sell a particular investment or strategy to your clients.
Existing business can and does provide even greater sources of revenue. Their loyalty to
you and dependence on you as a resource -- as well as your loyalty to them and ability to
focus on their wants and needs -- can result in profits for both of you. And they can also
be a resource for you. If they're happy with the service you provide, they'll talk about
you to others; and new business will definitely appear!
7. Give Them What They Need The Way They Want It
Communication is particularly important in this regard. We all want to hear things
differently. The same piece of information may mean different things to different clients.
After all, everybody has unique prejudices, pre-dispositions, and preferences. The trick
in any form of communication is knowing what significance certain information will have to
a particular client and then how to present it to him or her (or them if you are dealing
with a group) so that it has the greatest possible appeal or value. This is true whether
you're conducting an interview, giving a presentation, or even having an ordinary
telephone conversation.
Remember: Whether you are communicating or whether you are taking direct action, you have
to know from the start and throughout your relationship what exactly the client needs and
how he or she wants it, and respond accordingly. Such attention to detail will establish
you as an invaluable resource -- and set you apart from the competition!
|
