When you start in sales, or join a new company you feel it’s important to learn everything you can about what you are selling. You pull all the company brochures and read them cover to cover. You ask for product information from your boss and study it till you can recite it from memory. In the first couple of months you are consumed with understanding everything about the product or service you are selling, and that’s good.
However, that knowledge will not make you successful in sales. It’s helpful for sure but it’s only the ticket to the game, it won’t help you win the game. So if knowledge doesn’t make you a better salesperson what does?
Relationships and learning how to build them is the key to successful selling. In fact it is more important than any other skill or experience. You can have licenses and certifications out the wazoo, detailed product knowledge and can deliver detailed information that few others know but it won’t help you close sales, or certainly won’t help you close sales more than learning how to build relationships.
One of Maya Angelou’s famous quotes is “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” How people feel in your presence is where a relationship begins (or ends) and is what makes the sales process glide along.
Let’s start with this…you can’t build relationships because you think it’s good for your success as a sales professional. You can only build relationships if you completely, genuinely care about the other person and are interested in them. Building relationships is not a technique, it’s about connecting to someone at the heart level.
Think about the relationships in your life that matter and where you feel connected to someone…your friends, family, colleagues…people that matter. What makes them relationship? With family it’s a connection by blood but that doesn’t make them relationships. It simply means there is an assumption that you and they will spend time together, whether you enjoy it or not because they are family.
As you ponder your personal relationship are there common denominators that make you want to be in that relationship? I’m betting some of those are:
- — Feeling like they are interested in you and what matters to you.
- — A sense that their own needs can and will be pushed aside to help you get your needs met.
- — They listen and listen to understand.
- — They create a sense of safety, you can share your secrets and fears with them and know they are safe.
- — Judgement is not part of the equation.
- — They remember details about you and demonstrate they do. A card on your birthday, a gift that was something you mentioned you liked, the little things you might have mentioned in passing they remember.
- — When you talk to them they show genuine interest in what you are saying. They ask questions, they literally and figuratively lean into the conversation and they don’t interrupt to tell you something about them.
Relationships are about how you make people feel. My brother said to me many years ago “relationships are about where both people’s needs get met.” It’s so true. If you feel that your needs are getting met you want to be in the relationship. That my friends is the single skill that is essential in sales.
I remember a conversation I had with an employer when I owned a recruiting firm. He told me he may hire from a recruiter if the candidate they put in front of him was head and shoulders over others. But if he didn’t like them, if he didn’t want to be in a relationship with them he would never use them again. It’s about the relationship.
When I connect with a prospect, after spending time getting to know them, before I discuss fees I always ask the same general question. That question is “how do you feel about using being able to work together or how do you feel about working with me”?
Why do I ask that even before discussing cost?
Because if I haven’t built a relationship where they want to work with me I will never be able to overcome a fee objection if there is one. Even if there is no objection on price, I won’t be able to close the sale.
Relationship first, knowledge second.
Want More Selling Tips?
I don’t have all the secrets to selling but I have created a list of 11 that over the years I have determined are key to success in sales. Find out what they are by clicking the link below.
