In the last post, SalesCooke covered the first three components of a relationship oriented conversation. Let’s do a quick review. The first three steps are:
1. Nobody cares how great you, your company, or your product is.
2. Be sincerely engaged and interested in your client’s business.
3. Say, “I am not here to try to sell you something…” and mean it.
Okay now you have potentially established yourself as a person who is interested in learning about a person’s business and their business issues. Be very careful here. If you switch to ‘selling mode’, you will be right back where you started. Now what?
You have established the parameters for an information gathering meeting, here is what you do next:
4. Learn, learn and learn. Go into learn mode as discussed earlier. You are having a meeting with someone who isn’t grabbing their wallet or looking for your sales pitch because you told them you would not do it. Take the time to learn about their business and listen for the vision, the obstacles, and the challenges. Make mental notes of what they have tried, what they are looking to accomplish, and what the deadlines or time frames are.
5. Play it back and learn some more. Demonstrate that you have been listening and share what you have heard. “It sounds like you are struggling with…” or “You are really focusing on accomplishing….”. Summarize what you heard. Then, ask for a little more information. “What have you tried?” or “How has it been going so far?”. This is how you build on a relationship. By taking the time to learn about their drivers, goals or challenges without once trying to inject a sales conversation in the mix, you have begun to build trust.
6. “I have some ideas…”. Here is how you close the conversation, “There is lot of information here. I have some ideas that I think may be useful to you in dealing with some of the things we have talked about. I would like to sort some of this information out and get my thoughts organized. I would like to come back and talk about this at our next meeting.” Obtain commitment and set-up an appointment and leave.
7. Provide resources that solve. If you are really listening and learning, you will come up with a lot of ideas to support your client’s business, including resources outside your company’s offering. Bring all your ideas to the next meeting–vendors, partners, referrals, services, etc. Be prepared to solve all the problems that you discussed. Let them decide which solutions they like and which ones are the most valuable. Make certain you are committed to helping connect them to the solutions they decide they are most interested in. Remember, it’s not about you–it’s about them. This is how you become a trusted resource.