June 27, 2011

BE DiFFERENT on the Threes - Sales Relationship Building

THREES - Sales Relationship Building
THREES - Dazzling Customer Service
THREES - Strategic Planning
BE DiFFERENT on the Threes
Effective Sales is related to building deep relationships with your customers. Intimate relationships. Trusting relationships. Long term relationships. Mutual benefit relationships. Cherished relationships. Memorable relationships. “Gaspworthy” relationships.

The objective is to establish such a strong bond with a customer they will never EVER think of doing business with someone else. Customer intimacy results in what I call Barriers to Customer Exit; a far more effective approach that worrying about what the competition may be up to and over which you have little control.

Try these three things to get you on your way:
1. Declare that Bonding is in; Flogging is out. Relationship building requires that a new strategic context be struck and communicated to the organization. Make relationship selling matter. If you don’t make relationships a priority and key success factor for the organization, nothing will change. Leaders listen up!.
2. Make Relationship Building a critical component of the Sales Performance and Compensation Plan. Lets face it unless Relationship building is a critical component of Sales performance planning they won’t pay much attention to it. AND it must be “baked” into the Sales Compensation Plan as well. In my experience Sales is THE most compensation-driven function in any organization. It must be that way.
Show a Salesperson the Compensation Plan and watch them go. No question what their priorities and focus will be. Their actions will be DIRECTLY aligned with what they are getting paid to do. Great news if the Compensation Plan mirrors the Strategy of the organization; a DISASTER if it is out of synch.
Introduce Relationship-Building Behaviors as the metric. Define no more than 6 that you feel are critical to your success. You could adopt proactive solution presentations, listening and engaging, follow-up, keeping promises and internal advocacy as behaviors you intend to hold Sales accountable for. Don’t make it complicated, BUT implement it.
Year 1 make Relationship-building 20% of Sales’ compensation and increase it every year thereafter at a pace and to a level you are comfortable with.
3. Engage customers in rating Sales performance. How do you measure Relationship-Building behavior? Introduce a Customer Report Card and get the customer to rate how the person is doing on each behavior. This approach will not only change Sales behavior, it will also bond you closer to your customer. Being open to customer input and actually caring about what they have to say will endear them more to you. Count on it.

Moving from a Product Flogging culture to a Relationship-Building one is a major change. Be patient. Stick to your guns. BUT get started.

Cheers,
Roy


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Posted 6.27.11 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment