RELATIONSHIP MARKETING and RELATIONSHIP SELLING - Connecting with People, Establishing Rapport, and Helping Solve their Problems

Three Part of the Effective Selling Process

Establishing rapport with the prospective customer
Identifying the problem or need that the prospective customer has, consciously or subconsciously, or creating a need for a radically new product
Presenting the solution and persuading the prospective customer to buy

Customer Loyalty

The Things that Customers Want

Customers will usually come back if:

Your treat customers as individuals... More

Tips for Relationship Marketing¹

Listen to customers. They'll tell you what they need from you if you'll just take the time to listen and make them feel comfortable.
Ask effective questions. If they don't volunteer information, ask questions to uncover their problems and needs. Then, focus on solving problems or meeting needs rather than selling them another product. They'll appreciate your interest and you will, most likely, make a sale in the long run. And, even if you don't make an additional sale, customers may refer you to someone else based on the excellent service you've provided them.
Be honest. Don't try to sell something that's not needed. Likewise, if you can't fulfill particular customer needs, tell them, and try to help them find someone who will. Your helpfulness will be long remembered and those customers are more likely to come back to you when they need your type of product or service again.

The Friendship Factor

In today's customer-driven economy, corporations must move from product-based campaign marketing to a customer-focused personalized approach. People want to feel important and they want to know that you have expertise with their life or work issue. The more you demonstrate your specific understanding of their problems, concerns and aspirations, the more quickly they'll buy from you, often without really understanding what you are selling.

Sell High

When you sell high in customer organizations the close rates are higher, and sales cycles are shorter. Besides, there are no "surprise" decision makers at the point of close.

Modern Customer-based Relationship Approach

"Anyone who views a sale as a transaction is going to be toast down the line. Selling is not about peddling a product. It's about wrapping that product in a service – and selling both the product and the service as an experience. This approach to selling helps create a vital element in the process: a relationship," says Marilyn Carlson, CEO Carlson Companies

Customer relationship management is the management of customer communication over a relationship continuum. It includes relationship strategy and multi-channel relationship programs that produce both business value and customer experiences on a scale not seen in traditional marketing.

Customer-focused approach helps corporations overcome the following challenges that inhibit their growth:

Traditional advertising is more expensive and less effective due to increasing media fragmentation
Direct marketing is not an effective relationship building approach, as it merely directs wave after wave of product campaigns at fatigued customers
Product proliferation means a significant increase in competition vying for customer attention and crowding mass and direct marketing channels.⁴

Building Relationships – Your Key Business Skills

A relationship is two people eliciting responses from each other. If you want a change in response, then you must change your own actions.

As a business professional, you should ask yourself: "What business am I in?". The answer is quite simple: if your business has anything to do with people – and ALL businesses do - you are in the business of building relationships. "Some people think that if they sell things, they are in the business of selling.

They aren't. They are in the business of building relationships – because that's how you sell things."¹... More

Selling By Coaching

Treat your prospective customer as a player who wants to achieve extraordinary results. You are to help the player win. Listen to words, body language and emotions to understand the player's both conscious and unconscious needs.... More

Retaining Your Existing Customers

Relationship marketing increases the return on your sales investment. (Even if all you had put into previous sales efforts was time, that's valuable too!) When you sell an additional product to an existing customer, you don't have to repeat preliminary steps such as prospecting, rapport-building and information gathering because you're working upon a foundation that's already been laid. So, retaining customers and repeat sales are less expensive to obtain than new sales.

Connecting with People within Seconds

Connecting with people "is not about being phony or acting like someone you are not; it's about creating a favorable link between your internal nature with its beliefs and values, and the external world where you go to work."² Learning to connect fast with your customers by taking full advantage of your body, your mind, your voice, and above all your imagination will give you a significant competitive edge... More

Rapport – the Key to Influence

You cannot influence someone unless he or she likes you in some way.

Rapport is the key to influence. It starts with acceptance of the other person's point of view, their state and their style of communication. To influence you have to be able to appreciate and understand the other person's standpoint. And these work both ways: I cannot influence you without being open to influence myself... More

10 Strategic Tips on How To Achieve High Visibility In Your Target Market

By J. Glenn Ebersole, Jr.

Gaining high visibility and a positive, trusted position will ultimately enable you to build quality relationships with more people in your niche markets and result in an increased number of prospects. The people who achieve this high visibility exhibit certain characteristics and behaviors. Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach offers five (5) DO's and five (5) DONT'S to make up the following ten (10) strategic tips on how to achieve high visibility in your target market... More