The Power of Connecting: Your Sales Process
by Meridith Powell
When it comes to sales, these days, the relationship you have between you and your customer is everything. We are living in a world where sales success is less about what you sell and more about how you sell it.
Think about it; whether you like it or not, there is nothing you offer in the marketplace that your competitors don’t provide, couldn’t offer, or won’t deliver. It’s not your products or services that are differentiating you in the marketplace; it’s the relationships you make, the ones you build with your customers.
Why Building Relationships Is The Most Important Part of the Sales Process
But as sales professionals, we have to understand that sales and discovery are not the same things and that you have to build the connection before you start the discovery phase. Relationships are the way we differentiate ourselves in the marketplace, and it is how they build trust with us. And trust is what our customers use to determine if this is a long-term relationship or a one-time transaction.
So how do we build better connections with our customers?
3 Strategies To Better Connect With Customers
Understand:
That you connect with so much more than the words you speak. You communicate with your body language, your tone, and the way you move. And your customers use all of those to determine if they connect with you if they trust you.
Pace:
One of the most significant ways we communicate and connect is how we move. If your customers are outgoing, upbeat, always on the go, then your customers are FAST-paced. If your customers like to think before they speak, and they like time to process, then your customers are a little SLOWER-paced. And if you want to connect with customers, you need to match your pace to their pace. Because when we move as our customers move, they feel more connected to us.
Priority:
We also connect with our customers by showing that we understand what is most important to them. Connecting with customers is not a one size fits all, and we have to make sure we are listening to how our customers want to guide the conversation, what is their priority. Do they want to spend time getting to know you, and you get to know them. Or they may be more task-focused, and they want to stay on the topic at hand. When you pay attention to your customer’s priority, then they feel heard. If they feel listened to, they feel cared about, and if they feel cared about, they trust you.
Sales success today comes down to your ability to build relationships. The better you understand what it takes to connect and communicate with your customers, the more doors you’ll open, the more sales you’ll close.