How to develop a great selling relationship with customers when Selling anything

Relationship selling is the number one buzz word in the selling world today. Why?

This is because in today's world very few companies or salespeople can afford to make just one sale and then move on to the next prospect. Instead you must cultivate a relationship so you can continue to make sale after sale over many years if possible. The first sale is seldom profitable in it self. Most sales organizations or companies actually loose money on the first sale or two. After the initial sales the companies that these salespeople represent will begin to profit.

The world as I have often said is much different now than it was forty two years ago when I first started selling. Back in those days, at least in the business I was in, you seldom sold the same family twice. The products lasted ten years or more so you just kept moving on to the next family.

In the present day we have learned that we can make a lot more money by developing a cash flow by selling products on a regular basis to the same prospects over and over.

This is true whether you are selling cars, home remodeling, insurance, are just about any other product you can think of.

Cars and trucks wear out eventually or its owner wants a newer model every three or four years. Homes need to be painted, roofs replaced and kitchens updated on an ongoing basis. Insurance policies need to be reevaluated as the customer's needs change or incomes and life styles change.

The important thing is to keep on making more and more sales to the same people on a monthly, yearly or several year cycle depending on the product.

The first few sales are the hardest with each customer because you have to prove yourself by doing everything right, developing trust and most important of all, treat this customer like a king. In addition to all of this you have to under promise and over deliver on every sale you make.

The secret to keeping the customer after the honey moon is to continue treating them this way from now on.

You probably remember the old saying that is often heard in most sale's circles. The saying is ABC, "Always Be Closing." Well prospects and customers have an old saying as well and it is ABS. No its not what you are thinking, it is, "Always Be Shopping!"

The average customer will have little if any loyalty unless you learn to cultivate his good will. All the customer wants is a good deal, fair treatment and quality service. He or she has to be absolutely convinced that you offer the best deal in the land and your service is second to none.

Now in spite of all of your good intentions you will have some turn over in your customer base due to no fault of your own. This is because, some customers will move out of your territory or they will go out of business. Sometimes customers die and worst of all they get fed up and quit doing business with you.

This is usually due to some misunderstanding that could have been avoided or in the worst case scenario from simple neglect on your or your company's part. You didn't keep in touch so they came to the conclusion that you no longer cared and went on to seek the help of another salesperson.

If you want to keep this customer's business there may be times you have to go the extra mile. In other words, just like the mail man, you might have to deliver a part or something, own your own, in the middle of the night in rain, snow, sleet or hail to keep their plant running and your reputation intact. I've had to do it, so it can be done.

Your territory is a little like a garden. You have to tend to your garden if you expect it to produce, if not the garden will die.

You can now see what you are up against and I will be happy to give you a few tips on how to make life a lot simpler and as profitable as possible.

First off you need a great appearance so you can make that most important first impression on the prospect. Your prospect is going to make this most important decision as to whether or not they will consider doing business with you in the first thirty seconds are less of your meeting. If you make a bad impression it is a terrible uphill battle to try to get into their good graces. The hardest thing for salespeople to understand is this decision making process that is going on in the subconscious mind of the prospect. The salesperson doesn't have a clue why the prospect instantly either likes him or her or is turned off completely. If the prospect likes you he will say, "come on in"and have a great big smile on his face. On the other hand if he doesn't care for you, for whatever reason, even if it is just a deep seated hunch, he is going to tell you, " he is not interested or cannot afford it" and step back and close the door.

You can't blame the prospect because just like you he has learned to trust his hunches because they are nearly always right and it is only prudent to follow them.

In order to make a good first impression and avoid a lot of this negative behavior and rejection it would be wise to go to my website http://www.thesellingfool.com/ and read the article on appearance and you can avoid being rebuffed by most of your prospects.

In fact you will find all of the information necessary to learn to sell much better and also learn to develop long standing relationships with these customers and make the kind of money you need to be making at http://www.thesellingfool.com/

PS: I can't help you if you don't come visit.

Thank you,

Billy J Gibson
thesellingfoolbjg@yahoo.com
http://www.thesellingfool.com/

Thank you,

Why we do the Warm Up Process and Why it is so Important to the Selling Process

The warm up is your first and only job when you sit down to visit with your prospect for the first time. Your warm up will be roughly the same, whether the warm up is held at the prospects home, office, farm yard or through his reading and visiting your website introductory home page.

In all of these cases you have to focus on the process of convincing the prospect that you really are a honest, straight shooting individual that he or she can trust. The prospect is depending on you to help solve their problems and at a price they can afford to pay.

Once the trust is established, and only after the trust is established can you be considered worthy by the prospect to ask for their business.

What advantage does your being honest and above board give you over other salespeople? Really nothing, it is expected that you be honest and forth right and tell the truth about not only what you are selling but about anything else you might visit with the prospect about.

In other words don't be guilty of telling your fish stories on the job with your prospects. Save that kind of action for the nineteenth hole over a few cool ones with your buddies in the club house. When you try to top your prospect's favorite fish story with your bigger yarn then you just win the battle and loose the sale. Let the prospect have his fun, just listen with awe and amazement. He will appreciate it and you will probably be glad that you listened and enjoyed his story as well.

A lot of my associates over the years have preached warming up for a few minutes with the prospects and then moving on to the presentation. When you do this you short change the customer and that is the way they feel when you leave. In fact, in many cases the phone is already ringing when you get back to the office. The new customer is calling with the bad news that the order has to be cancelled due to --- ( buyer's remorse).

In my opinion doing this short cut version of the warm up is entirely wrong. When talking to prospects in their homes and assuming you are selling something with a price tag big enough to earn you a commission of several hundred dollars, I would certainly recommend that you spend a minimum of one hour during your warm up period the first time you visit with your prospect. Do your best to spend the whole hour doing warm up. If you can't imagine what you would talk about for the whole hour you can go to my website
http://www.thesellingfool.com/ and read the section on "The Warm Up." This will give you plenty of information on how to do this and do it right.

When selling products in this price range you will find, assuming the prospect needs the product and can afford it, you will close in the range of ninety percent of the prospects that you invest this one hours time in doing the warm up.

Also when you are selling some products that have price tags high enough so that your net commission is say six hundred to thirty five hundred dollars a sale then you have to develop a lot of trust. For this kind of money the prospect needs to know who he is dealing with. Don't you think?

On the other hand if you are selling something that might make you ten dollars per sale you are going to have to make the prospect comfortable in short order and move on with the program. You will be trying to sell fifteen or twenty of these deals a day. But even then, if the product is a repeat type of thing, where you are going back to the house once or twice a month, to make new orders over and over again. I would spend the hour the first visit, to make sure I would be welcomed back again and again. If you build a route of two to three hundred customers, one at a time, in a years time you will have developed an awful good return.

I might mention that these customers will also come nearer to giving you referrals to the rest of their families and friends, if you are someone they know they can trust. Spending the time to bond and build trust, is where it is at. So make it easy on your self and your pocket book and just do it.

When you become someone the prospect can depend on day in and day out they will want you tending to their sons and daughters families needs because they know that you can be trusted and that you care. Caring help is a big seller in this day and age of similar products.

Now if you see a prospect at their office, they are going to want you to be all business and get to the what is in it for me benefits and after that, they want you to get down to the bottom line.

Even though this means the warm up will have to be a lot more reasonable, don't rush it. You can learn to move at a reasonable non pushy pace. You can be making friends and warming up while unpacking your brief case and getting set up to sell. Just take your time doing it, not too fast, not too slow. This way you wont come off like a carnival barker or a pitch man. These business men don't want the hype, they just want the facts.

Now for the quickest warm up of all. If you are selling on the internet your introductory home page has to be laid out so that the prospect can see what you have to offer, and how to navigate and get to what he is looking for in ten seconds or less. People no longer have patience. It is the old time is money syndrome. If you can't interest the prospect right away they will hit the back button and be looking some where else in a New York minute.

This means your website does not have to be all that fancy, just easy to navigate, with lots of content and plenty of reason for the prospect to stay around for a while. Hopefully he will click on something while he sees what you have to offer and actually make a purchase. When you see my website you will see a clean well organized site with plenty of content. I do have products and articles all over the place that will help you sell more and better than you ever thought you could before. Lets face it, selling is a system and you have just got to find what works well for you and then do it over and over and over again. Incidentally this is same way you go about getting rich.

I can't help but think of a lot of different things while I am writing this that would go along way to help improve my web site http://www.thesellingfool.com and make it more productive. I am going to make editing the web site my number one project next week.

I always try to practice what I preach and this way you will know that I am a straight shooter as well. I don't believe in asking you to do something that I would not do my self.

When you get to the website http://www.thesellingfool.com you will find a lot more information on how to warm up, prospect, present, close and sell almost any thing.

I encourage you, if you are going to be a salesperson or for that matter join any other profession that deals with the public, to spend a few evenings working at my website, learning to get a long with others, as well as selling better and selling more by selling your self first to your self and then to others.

After all if you are going to sell, you might as well be one of the best, other wise known as a
Selling Fool.

Thank you,

Billy J Gibson
thesellingfoolbjg@yahoo.com/
http://www.thesellingfool.com/