Client Communication as Easy as A-B-C

POST AN ARTICLE

Featured Sales Blogs

In Partnership Wth:

DiversityJobs.com

JustJobs.com

MAIN MENU

Client Communication as Easy as A-B-C

Written by Kendra Lee

More Gravy
Beware: Your True Intentions are Showing

When your intention is to help your customer improve their operation, you don't talk about your product or service. Period. It's really quite irrelevant at the onset of your discussion. Even though you're really excited about it, you don't talk about it. Your offering is simply a tool that helps them achieve a very specific business objective. That's what's important. It's all about them!

When I opened the email, the first sentence jumped out me: "I've just been to your website and your company is a perfect fit for our services!" Clearly the seller was really excited about his discovery.

On the other hand, I was backpedaling as fast as I could. I wanted nothing to do with him. If he'd caught me on the phone, my instincts would have immediately erected barricades. If we were meeting in person, objections would be spewing from my mouth.

Why? Because he seemed too excited about selling me. Without even realizing it, his approach screamed "self-serving" and I recoiled from it. My reaction isn't unusual. In fact, it's the norm. You do the same thing. We all hate being sold!

Yet invariably, I see sellers engaging in self-sabotaging behavior that can only lead to failure. For example:

When their company introduces a new product or service, most sellers rush to convert their hottest prospects. Filled with passion, they unwittingly create insurmountable obstacles that actually derail their sales efforts or delay them indefinitely.

When good-hearted, intelligent and talented people put on their sales hat, they suddenly morph into blathering idiots. It's as if they think this is what selling is all about – even though they're repulsed by their own actions.

When well-intentioned sellers are fearful of meeting their quotas or even staying in business, their desperation to land a client or get the order causes them to push themselves on others.

Whether you want to or not, you always communicate your intent. Prospective buyers sense it instantaneously and react accordingly. If they feel you have their best interests in mind, they're attracted to you. Conversely, they're repelled by any behavior that smacks of self-serving intentions.

To be successful selling your prospect or service, focus on making your prospects successful. Use these strategies to re-jigger your thinking.

Change Your Question

Once you've targeted an account to go after, instead of focusing first on "How can I sell this to them?" ask yourself, "How can I improve their business?" When this question is at the forefront of your thinking, you start behaving different. You can't make calls until you've researched their firm, know their company's objectives and understand the challenges they're facing. You prepare for appointments with their success in mind, not yours.

Change Your Language

When your intention is to help your customer improve their operation, you don't talk about your product or service. Period. It's really quite irrelevant at the onset of your discussion. Even though you're really excited about it, you don't talk about it. Your offering is simply a tool that helps them achieve a very specific business objective. That's what's important. It's all about them!

Change Your Role

Stop putting on your sales hat! Stop thinking of yourself as a seller. You are a business improvement specialist. As a result of your work to improve your customer's operation, they will buy your product or service. Sales is the outcome of what you do, but it is not your purpose.

Many sales managers and business owners will rail at what I say. They want you to "go out there and sell, sell, sell." Marketers will push you to "tell your prospects all about our unique differentiators." Even you will likely feel resistant to making these changes.

But truthfully, the more you need sales, the more important these strategies become. Top sellers know this. When you're in their presence, you never feel like you're being sold. So you open up and tell them more. That's how it works. And before long you're happily doing business with them.

Always remember: your intention is showing. If it's all about you, you're toast. The best way to make a sale is to make a difference.

I pride myself on my follow-up skills and strive to maintain relationships with clients long after projects have been completed. But, the longer I’m in sales, or working with a particular account, the more contacts I have. Suddenly my simple approach to calling when someone comes to mind, or when my CRM system says I should, no longer works. This is the dilemma facing many of us as successful sellers. What to do? The answer: a two-pronged strategy leveraging today’s technology.

To be a successful consultative seller, you need to grow and maintain a broad base of client contacts. Before you know it, you have hundreds, even thousands of people on your contact list. Obviously it’s impossible to maintain personal contact, yet personal contact is a key to building and strengthening your client relationships.

How do you maintain and strengthen relationships with all of these people so you will be among the first – if not the first – person they remember when they have a business issue that requires your expertise?

Begin with a “divide and conquer” approach, categorizing your contacts into tiers. The ‘A’ tier can include top contacts or recommenders you stay in touch with regularly. These are the people least likely to slip from our sights because they will probably buy from you soon. It’s the ‘B’ and ‘C’ tiers that are the challenge.

The ‘B’ tier are contacts that don’t have an immediate need, but may have one in the next 12 months. You may have done work for them before, or discussed places you can assist, but frequent communication at this point is not required.

The ‘C’ tier are contacts that may someday appreciate your services, but not in the foreseeable future.

While both ‘B’ and ‘C’ tier clients know you are there, you don’t want to count on them to remember to call when a need arises that you can assist with. Yet our schedules are busy and often we don’t have the luxury of calling every ‘B’ and ‘C’ client regularly to check in.

Some sellers feel it is enough to hope that their paths will cross again in the future. That’s not definitive enough for me. As I look at it, there are two prongs to a strategy for staying connected and strengthening relationships with our legion of client contacts.

Keep our clients current on what we are focused on
Provide our clients with new ideas

The first prong is easy. LinkedIn, the online business networking site, shows your network “what you are working on”, updating it every week, even emailing it out to your whole network of contacts you have registered. Make sure all your ‘B’ contacts are linked to you, and they can follow your activities every week as long as you keep it updated. As you speak with or think of them, link to your ‘C’ contacts.

Client relationship manager and email database technologies can help with the second prong. Use the tools in your CRM to create a nearly automated communication strategy. Queue emails to connect with ‘B’ contacts every 60, 90 or 120 days. Write an email that shares a new thought, a related issue a client had and solved that would be of interest, a return on investment another client achieved and how.

As your ‘B’ contacts reply, call to connect voice-to-voice.

The ‘C’ tier shouldn’t require a lot of time and effort. Add them to your newsletter list, or emails you might send out regarding updates in their industry. Plan to communicate with them every 4 - 6 months.

Improve Networking Skills | The Sales Store

Kendra Lee
		About the author:
		Kendra Lee is a top IT seller, sales advisor and business owner who knows how to shorten time to revenue in the SMB market in innovative ways. She is the author of the best selling book Selling Against the Goal: How Corporate Sales Professionals Generate the Leads they Need. Under Ms. Lee's direction her organization has assisted sellers in increasing referrals more than 328% in just 7 weeks, penetrating SMB markets in just 6 weeks, driving new client acquisition more than 31% year to year, and increasing annual revenue. .