December 15, 2011

Business Sales: 4 Clues to Intimacy

If I’m Cross, Everyone’s Cross
180 Degree Thinking
3 Steps to BE EaSY
You know that building deep trusted relationships with your business clients is critical to the long term success of your organization and you, personally. You have been working hard on it every day. It’s been a top priority.

The question is “How do you know if you are making any progress?”
Here are 4 clues to tell you:

1. You are always invited to your customers’s strategic planning meetings. They value your opinions. They know that you know their business. They trust your intentions. They honor your strategic skills and experience.
They view you as a friendly “Expert from afar”. You are a valuable member of their direction-setting team.

2. You have an “office” on their premises. A physical presence among them.They want you accessible. Close at hand. To bounce ideas off. Test some ideas. The ultimate expression of Trust and Value is real estate owned by the customer; given to you.

3. Your customer NEVER goes to an RFP. Why bother? They have so much trust and faith in you that going out to get others to submit a bid on what they want is seen as a waste of time. When your customer needs something, you are already on it. There is no need to involve other “suppliers”. You take action. You deal with it seamlessly.

4. Language. You are NEVER referred to as a salesperson from Acme (or whatever). Your currency in their organization places you among their Leadership Team. Labels are meaningless. You are their trusted colleague. Their partner. Their friend.

So, how did you do? Out of the 4 Clues, how many apply to you? 4/4 suggests you are in Sales Nirvana. 1/4 says you have some work to do.

The important thing is knowing where you are so you can take action to move on from there.

Cheers,
Roy


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Strategy Creation | Marketing | Sales | Permalink
Posted 12.15.11 at 05:06 am by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment