Clients for Life - Building Long-Term Relationships
Colin Thompson
Managing Partner Cavendish/Author/International Speaker/Mentor/Partner
If you could take everything we know about communications, put it all in a large pot, boil it and distil it down into its critical essence, it is about the importance of relationships in successful business/selling. Building and maintaining long-term relationships is the key behaviour and skill of the top ten percent of the money earners in business/sales, in every field, selling every product and service.
The Reason for Success
Most of your success in life will depend on your ability to get along well with other people, and on the quality of your relationships. Psychologist Sidney Jourard, found that 85 percent of a person's happiness in life comes from happy interactions with other people. The reverse holds true as well: 85 percent of a person's unhappiness or issues/problems in life comes from difficulties in getting along with others.
Sell to Lots of People
Anyone can sell to a few people, some of the time. But only the very best human relations experts can sell to a wide variety of people, and sell to them repeatedly. The only way that you can make the kind of big money that you are capable of is by selling more easily, and more often, to the prospects you talk to, and by having those prospects open doors to others through testimonials and referrals. All top business/salespeople build and maintain high quality business relationships with their customers and sell to them repeatedly year after year.
Decide Emotionally, Justify Logically
We are all sensitive to the quality of our relationships with other people. We are primarily emotional and we make most of our decisions on the basis of how we feel inside. We may carefully consider all of the logical and practical reasons why or why not with regard to buying a product or service, but in the final analysis we tend to go with our gut feeling. We listen to our inner voices. We obey the dictates of our hearts. We buy on the basis of how we feel about the relationship that we have with the other person. Where there is no relationship, there is no sale/no business continues.
Focus on the Key Variable
Everything that you ever learned of value in the profession of selling, regarding your product or service, or personality, is only helpful to the degree to which it contributes to the building of high quality relationships with customers.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, become a relationship expert in sales and business process. Focus first on the relationship, above all, and the sale will take care of itself.
Second, take care of your relationships once you have built them. Never take them for granted. Tend to them as you would to a flower garden.
Take on board `Accelerate with Impact` - ISBN: 978-1-84549-289-2
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07XKVCTJ4
and
`Create Your Own Success Story` - ISBN: 978-1-84549-260-1
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07XP62XYC
Plus,
`Building Client Partnerships & Strategic Alliances`
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07YGS79GT
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Sharing information for your success.