February
2009
How to Start a Business Relationship
One of the major benefits of sales automation is building a sales pipeline for business. The concept is really simple. You take a series of events that you would normally do to initiate a relationship and automate them. If you want to follow the best practice of selling, we can look to personal examples. With Valentines Day around the corner, I’m thinking about how I initiated a relationship with my wife over 21 years ago.
Start with Good Research
In many ways, selling is like dating and we should approach selling and building relationships in the same way. I can remember when I first became attracted to my wife, Sallie, whom I’ve been married to for over 21 years now. Little did I know that I would follow the best practice of selling to win her heart.
I met my wife in a Sunday school class and I was immediately attracted to her. I wanted to know more about her. I did what anyone in my position would do, I did a little research. I asked questions and learned that she was a single mother and wasn’t in a relationship at the time. Not that is would have mattered to me. I say this because in selling, we often come across prospects that already have a relationship in place. Would this stop you? This shouldn’t stop us when we learn that a prospect is already involved.
What we need is a set of criteria that helps us determine whom is a good prospect for us. This criterion is vital to making good decisions on which we place on our all important prospect list. Trust me, I did quite a bit of research and determined that Sallie was a good match.
Getting Noticed
There are countless ways we can use to generate interest in our prospects. In my case, I used networking. I attended many of the Church events for singles and found myself talking to Sallie in casual conversations. When I’m doing this for business, I do the same thing. Sometimes it requires attending a Chamber of Commerce meeting or a Business Expo where I know my prime prospect will be attending. We can also use social networking with LinkedIn, Facebook and many others that help us create and generate interest in our prime prospects.
The goal at these networking opportunities is to get noticed and initiate a connection. In sales and in dating, it might take a while. For my wife, it took a few months before she actually noticed me and we started dating. In business, there have been many situations that I have tried to generate a response. It could take months and sometimes years to be noticed. In each case, we need to be on our best behavior and we should be persistent in what we will do. I say this because; we never know what will spark the interest we need to initiate a relationship.
Don’t Give UP!
The sad part about selling is that most salespeople will give up after the first contact. A few will move on the next steps. However, it will only be a few who will be persistent enough to get noticed. This is where a selling process and a sequence of events need to be choreographed to develop a relationship. What do you do that generates interest and are you persistent enough to get noticed on your prospects timing, not yours.
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