Sales professionals have to understand each customer and how to effectively relate to them on a human level. Salespeople too often assume they can just waltz through the door of a customer’s office, spew out a well-rehearsed elevator speech, and win the business.
A well-rehearsed elevator speech may work for a single point of sale. However, if you are responsible for building long-term relationships with customers, it is sheer and ineffective. Customers buy for three primary reasons:
- They feel some interpersonal connection to you.
- You speak to their needs.
- You offer a superior product or service (either perceived or realized).
Elevator Speech:
Your sales speech distilled into its most potent and clear pitch delivered in 30 seconds or less.
Analyze Your Customer Relationships
There are three phases of relationship building in business and they can differ bilaterally. Bilateral differences mean you may feel one way about your relationship with your client and she may feel another way toward the relationship. Minimizing the differences in your relationships and moving toward genuine acceptance is what you need to accomplish.
An Internal Consumer Checklist is a list that exists inside each buyer. In business, a buyer is constantly checking this internal list to validate whether a seller is doing a quality job. It is when a salesperson fails to meet the criteria of the customer’s checklist that problems arise in the relationship.
Internal Consumer Checklist includes but is not limited to the following:
- Believable
- Dependable
- High Integrity
- Honesty
- Knowledgeable
- Overall Organization Service
- Quality Product or Service
- Quality Relationship
- Solution Provider
- Trustworthy
- Viable Partner
- Genuine Acceptance
Attempt to keep all of your relationships in the area of genuine acceptance. You know you are in this phase when you score high marks from the customer on the Internal Consumer Checklist. Now this is not literal. It is a self assessment for the most part. You are not asking them to fill out a score sheet; however, you can ask for feedback on how your are doing.
Genuine Acceptance gives you the power to solidify larger sales and secure higher margins. It is easier for a customer to invest in you when they feel genuine acceptance.
Genuine Acceptance has a double perspective:
- New Business Development
- Long-Term Client Development
New Business Development – Genuine Acceptance
If you are building a new business relationship, your goal is to gain genuine acceptance as you move through the sales process. Most new business relationships begin in the disconnection phase. Customers are disconnected in new business development because their Internal Consumer Checklist is unclear regarding you and the organization. It is for this reason that you must work diligently to fill the gaps in their Internal Consumer Checklist quickly. Methods for doing this are discussed further in the section.
Long-Term Client Development – Genuine Acceptance
Long-term client development requires you keep a client in the genuine acceptance phase. Often sales professionals fail to maintain genuine acceptance for long periods of time (greater than two years). It is for this reason organizations experience client turnover or, at the least, lack of loyalty. As the client/consultant relationship grows, it is critical that you focus on potential shortfalls in the relationship, which can negatively affect Genuine Acceptance.
Shortfalls cause clients to move into a tolerant state of mind. Sales professionals usually take for granted the strength of the consultant/client relationship, if the consultant feels they are good friends with the customer. This is a fatal error.
At times, even in great client/consultant relationships, the client invests money with competitors. The reasons for lack of loyalty are numerous but usually relate to one of the Internal Consumer Checklist not being fully satisfied. The exception to this rule is when a customer needs multiple suppliers for backup purposes or your organization cannot supply all the products they need.
Assess Your Customers
Mentally assess how each of your top customers would assess you on the Internal Consumer Checklist. If you are in doubt how you rate with a customer, pick up the phone and give them a call. Ask them a few questions about how you are doing, what they think of your service, and if they have anything they would change about you or your service/product.
Sometimes a sincere call to a customer can turn a potentially negative situation around. In the worst case scenario, where a customer is not happy with you and you are unable to turn the situation around, at least you can use it as a learning experience to keep the rest of your clients in the Genuine Acceptance phase.
