The Relationship Between the Relationship and the Sales Outcome Part 2

Yesterday I wrote about the Importance of the Relationship to the Sales Outcome.  I was asked to talk more about how the elite (top 6%) salespeople develop that kind (late-stage in the early stage) of relationship.

Have you ever worked with salespeople that were so bad you thought, “She couldn’t close a door!”?  And have you ever worked with salespeople that were so good that you thought, “She could sell white to rice!”?

There’s a good chance that the difference has less to do with their closing skills and much more to do with their ability to build a late stage relationship in the earliest stage of the sales process – the first meeting.

So what do they do?  Here are the top ten things they do:

1. They learn about their prospect, not only from a business persepctive, but a personal one too
2. They ask lots of questions -not from a list of 50 questions -by going wider and deeper with the responses they get from the prior questions
3. They share a little about themselves – no life stories, no company histories – by empathizing with something they heard about
4. They ask the really tough questions – the ones nobody else dares to ask – that differentiate them from everyone else
5. They walk rather than run from 1st to 2nd base (Baseline Selling Sales Process)
6. They get their prospects to share their feelings about the issues being discussed
7. They gain their prospects’ trust gradually over the course of their discussion
8. They are credible – they don’t talk badly about their competition and they don’t oversell themselves
9. They make it all about their prospects
10. Their posture includes the roles of humble expert, caring friend, and helpful advisor

Now I’ll ask yesterday’s question again – how do your salespeople stack up?