Going Beyond Traditional Relationship Selling | Sales Strategies

Most of my clients are in traditional businesses: commodities, manufacturing, aerospace, and finance. Businesses and business reps that have a long history in the market have been successful because of relationships. When you spend 30 years in your territory selling to the same customers and buyers, you have a good relationship with those customers. You see those businesses grow, thrive, and flourish as a result of your work. However, recently, we’ve been helping some of those clients of mine reposition the way they are thinking about relationships.

Don’t Just Be Nice Anymore

Our clients and those experienced reps have found that being nice is no longer satisfactory. Businesses aren’t just buying from people who are nice—who can look them in the eye, shake their hand, and go out for drinks. Today, businesses are looking for an enhanced business relationship where you can show them how valuable—from a monetary sense—you are to their business. You need to show them how you can save and make them money. They’re looking for new ideas and insights to grow their business. They’re looking if you care enough about them and their business that you are willing to confidently address problems and provide solutions. More importantly, don’t be afraid of thinking that you might be insulting them by suggesting new ideas.

You Need to Educate Businesses

Business people, buyers, influencers, and customers today need to be educated. They need to understand what is going on around them and how they can take advantage of that to grow their business. When you bring them those new ideas, they deepen their relationship with you because, literally, their brain is telling them, “You care enough about my business to actually have made me uncomfortable by putting a risk out there.”

What new ideas or insights can you bring to your customers on a regular basis? What new ways are you proposing to not only help them succeed, but to also deepen your relationship? Indeed, being nice doesn’t cut it anymore.

4 responses to “Going Beyond Traditional Relationship Selling | Sales Strategies”

  1. […] weren’t thinking about what if their biggest customer goes away, where would they find that additional revenue, or what customer should they be working on right now in order to grow the business and to make up […]

  2. Good morning Colleen, thank you for this excellent video. For me it illustrates overcoming the occasional fear of losing a client because we offer advice that in the long term would be beneficial; but today may be viewed as critical. Thanks for giving me more confidence!

  4. […] too many sales teams underperform because they have underperforming sales reps in the team. These sales reps need to be replaced. […]

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