Sales people make their money through relationships. The 30,000 foot view is cliché at this point, but what actually makes a good relationship?
I see two main aspects:
- Bringing value
- Being a human
Bringing value seems simple, but it’s not.
It’s all about figuring out what matters to your customer, and figuring out how to help them solve their problems. It’s about legitimately thinking with your customer’s best interest in mind. About timely and thoughtful responses to requests, and going the extra mile to make a difference.
Being a human also sounds simple enough, but it’s easy to mess up.
This is about forming authentic relationship. Being ourselves, thinking about customers as more than just a dollar sign, and realizing that our professional interactions, although important, are not our whole lives or our customers’ whole lives.
Smiling and acting like our customer’s best friend when we see them doesn’t mean anything if we’re pushing a subpar product on them and it takes us a week to respond to their emails.
Fishing for commonality and shooting the breeze at the expense of our customers’ time has its place, but it’s also incredible inconsiderate when taken too far or deployed in the wrong setting.
We like to do business with people like.
That means that we both like them as a person, and we receive some form of value when we interact with them.
One without the other doesn’t get very far.
-Brandon