“Whether they stem from business or personal situations, our relationships are what support us, connect us, and allow us to progress in all aspects of our lives.”
Michelle Tillis Lederman, 11 Laws of Likability
Your clients are undeniably one of your most precious assets. Without them would you exist in sales? The more you understand that meaningful and credible relationships with your client's matter, the more successful you will become, end of story.
"Your clients smell what you're cooking and not cooking really fast."
Building meaningful relationships and connecting with your clients is mission critical to your sales success. We as humans crave and value relationships.
Do you think your clients crave the same?
Relationships are a part of human nature. We long for and value relationships. It's hard-wired in our DNA.
"The more you give, ultimately the more you receive."
On a scale of 1-10...
- How well are you personally engaging with your clients?
- Are you authentically investing in building meaningful relationships?
- Are you doing what they believe is necessary? Would you even know?
CREDIBLE RELATIONSHIPS
"Trust is the foundation of a credible and healthy relationship."
Your ability to build trust and credibility is mission critical to maintaining healthy client relationships. Lack of credibility and how believable you are, causes your clients to not trust you.
Lack of trust costs you your clients and diminishes your ability to consistently succeed in sales.
Credibility = Trust + Expertise + Authenticity
Building and keeping credible relationships is not simple and straightforward. You must authentically invest in order to build a credible relationship.
This means it takes careful planning, consistency, discipline and heart to nurture relationships in order to become an integral part of your clients' lives.
You simply can't do this with a monthly call, a quarterly visit, a semi-annual visit or the classics... "I'm checking in with you" or "Just touching base."
RELATIONSHIPS AND GARDENING
Nurturing and growing your client relationships is similar to gardening in many ways. It takes time and dedication.
Do you have a green thumb when tending to your relationship garden?
Fail to water your garden and we all know what happens. A relationship which is started, but not watered will wither and die, it is the natural order of things.
"Gardening is a process. Planting is a task."
A garden which is planted and not tended or cultivated, ultimately will grow weeds, wither and die.
How many sales reps walk out into their relationship garden and find that it has been decimated from neglect (no deposits of relationship trust) and overrun with weeds (competitors).
"Sales professionals fertilize their relationship garden while sales reps struggle to water their garden."
The expert gardener will never skip a day of weeding or watering. The next day the garden may not look much different, but they know that over time the results reflect the effort.
A sales professional will never skip a day of relationship gardening. They realize the more they tend to their garden the more the relationships blossom.
Most sales reps are like average gardeners. They blame nature for burning their plants (clients), not raining enough, bugs, weeds, poor soil and crappy results.
A true sales professional is like expert gardeners. They shield their plants (clients) from getting burned, provide water during droughts, protect against bug(competitors), pull weeds, enrich the soil and enjoy spectacular results.
THE GARDEN OF TRUST
I believe gardening is a powerful example as any for the lifecycle of a process. I see a direct correlation between what it takes to grow a beautiful garden and what it takes to build trust with your clients.
Growing a relationship garden with your clients involves the commitment of a shared vision, deep respect, ongoing mutual effort, and patience.
The loyalty and trust you build with your clients will continue to reward you in unexpected ways, as long as you fertilize your relationship garden.
“A garden requires patient labor attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.”
Liberty Hyde Bailey
Be authentic, share your gifts, maintain and cast your vision, bring sincerity and most of all bring relationship substance to your client gardens.
Remember... gardening adds years to your sales life.
I understand, I get where you all are coming from. Every day, I walk in your shoes. I am fully committed to helping your sales team integrate social aspects and heartfelt strategies into your current sales process to grow new business. I want you to get results. This is why I am passionate about doing this the right way, the genuine way, the authentic way! It's about understanding value before visibility.
Selling From the Heart is making a difference! I poured my heart into every page of this book and I think you're going to love it. You can find it on Amazon in paperback, kindle and in audio. You can click on the book image below and this will take you to Amazon.
You can find more material inside Selling From The Heart.
In a world full of empty suits, I'm passionate about helping sales reps succeed by getting valuable before they get visible. I help sales teams understand the true value they bring to the market.
I appreciate getting the opportunity to share my stories. Integrating the use of social and sharing my story on LinkedIn was my “game-changer” in the highly competitive office technology world. With great pride I transform, challenge, coach and inspire sales teams to grow new business by helping them share their story and how they communicate it out by integrating the use of social inside the sales process. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and on my podcast by clicking on Selling from the Heart.
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