Relationships are key to sales. They build trust and help establish a sense of familiarity with the customer. If you want to grow your business and increase sales, you must take the time to build relationships.
Chasing clients, having a strong pitch, defending your product, and countering objections are several yet vital aspects of having a successful sales career.
How Do You Build Relationships In Sales?
Statistics show that 70% of a salesperson’s time is spent building relationships. That means that the salespeople spend more than half of their workdays on relationship-building activities, like networking and hosting events.
There are many ways to go about building quality relationships with customers when selling business solutions or products. However, it’s vital to keep in mind that the relationship is at the heart of successful selling.
Salespeople must be able to identify and understand the goals of their customers to sell more effectively. This begins with building sales relationships that focus on mutual understanding, trust, loyalty, credibility, and respect for people’s needs.
To improve customer loyalty, there are three crucial factors that you’ll need to consider.
- Selling Relationship
With the complexity of most services and products and the limited time that salespeople and customers have, it’s easier to build relationships with your prospects.
Remember: You’ll achieve long-term success by building strong customer relationships! The key is to find ways for both you and your clients to meet each other’s needs. If you can do this, then they will buy from you over and over again. Not only that, but they will also recommend your company as a trusted supplier or service provider of choice within their industry.
- Profit Partnering
Profit partnering is more of a mindset, which means that it’s not just about selling. It’s also about helping your customers resolve their business problems and effectively achieve their goals. To improve your customer’s loyalty, you need to think about how you can help them achieve their goals.
When you feel that your client’s success is also yours, the customer becomes more valuable to you – regardless of whether or not they are currently using your services or products. Therefore, every salesperson needs to understand the importance of profit partnering and seek ways to positively contribute to their customers’ profits by achieving their business goals together through mutual trust and respect. This way, both parties will remain loyal to each other over time.
- Consultative Selling
Consulting is not your average sales process. It takes time, patience, and understanding the client’s needs to build a relationship with them for future business opportunities. Consultative selling is known as the best way to build long-term relationships with clients.
Instead of selling your products or services to your target consumers, you provide information and expertise to help them solve a problem. You may even go as far as finding out what your client needs so you can offer the solution before presenting it in any way.
Customer satisfaction is the key to a successful business. The key is not in closing the deal but in building a relationship with your clients for repeat sales and referrals from them down the road.
10 Ways To Build Better Customer Relationships
Sales-based relationships are built on mutual trust between you and your client, so it’s essential that both of you feel comfortable working together throughout the entire consulting process.
You need to establish rapport with them before any selling can take place; once they like and trust you, they will see value in what you have to offer and buy more often than if there was no connection at all.
- Provide a personalized approach through warm greetings based on the situation/scenario
- Take note that several consumers prefer interactions and building better relationships than the service or product you offer
- Ensure that you are on the same boat and understand their needs
- Update your consumers about things they may be interested in regarding your business
Provide proactive service
When building positive relationships with your clients, you cannot just sit and wait for them to come. Instead, give out information that they can use and provide some valuable insights on how they could benefit from it. Help your consumer understand the value of what you have to offer without pressuring them into buying something immediately.
Be transparent about various details regarding your business practices; this will help build trust between you over time. Another way is to provide real-time client support, so if they have any questions or concerns, you can answer them at the moment.
Give your client a chance to get to know who you are and what kind of business you run from time to time. They may not be interested in buying something right away, but this will change over time, especially when they see that there’s more value than just monetary gains attached with getting whatever it is that they want from you.
Personalize client relationships
Satisfied customers are more likely to return and recommend you. Therefore, businesses need to encourage client relationships that go beyond transactions. People want personalized, customized attention from the companies they choose, so take the time to learn about your customers’ hobbies and interests.
By making an effort to understand their personal preferences and connections with others in their lives, you can establish a strong business-client bond outside of work hours or product descriptions/prices.
- Work with advanced tools for client engagement
- Match the tone of your business with the client’s personality
- Identify customer preferences
Focus on consumer’s experience
The integral part of any business is to follow the consumer’s experience. When selling a product, salespeople need to know precisely what their consumers need and how they can provide them with a better solution. Sales representatives must be willing to work on developing long-term relationships instead of short-term transactions.
Understand consumer psychology
Once you understand consumer’s psychology, you can create marketing strategies that trigger the right emotions. For example, if consumers feel good about your product or service, they will be more likely to repurchase it and recommend it to their friends.
Always provide value
While it can be a challenge to keep clients coming back, it’s feasible. Providing value is an integral part of relationship-building because it’s where you show that your product or service can help them. It doesn’t have to be a significant value proposition, but just something they’re interested in.
Even when company sales are down, providing value will always result in some form of return for the client and your business. If there isn’t any immediate return on investment (ROI), then at least you’ve made another impression that could lead to future revenue opportunities down the road.
Integrate etiquette with your customer service
Poor customer service can bring down even the best of brands. Integrate etiquette with your customer service to win customers over and turn them into lifelong brand ambassadors.
Some of these etiquettes include:
- Always use positive phrases and words
- Ensure always to practice listening to what your consumer is saying.
- Build rapport by showing empathy
- Always offer gratitude and show your appreciation
Use CRM tools
CRM tools are strategically designed to keep track of your clients. You can use them to keep an eye on the activities and challenges faced by each client, so you know exactly what is going wrong or right for their business.
Once you understand what your client wants, you can use your CRM to help them accomplish their goals. This will strengthen the relationship between both of you and helps in creating a long-term business partnership that is beneficial for everyone involved.
Offer multi-channel communication methods.
Offering your clients a variety of communication methods is the best way to keep them engaged. By providing multiple channels, you make it easier for your client to contact you whenever they need anything from you.
This also helps build long-term relationships between both parties since your clients don’t have to worry about wasting time or missing out on an opportunity by not getting back quickly enough.
The customer always settles for convenience, and it is your responsibility to provide them with the most convenient way of communication. Make sure you are available 24/7. If you want a sales relationship that goes beyond just making profits, then it is essential for both parties involved to be accessible at all times.
You might have noticed that some businesses offer their services and products even on holidays or weekends because they realize how crucial it is for clients not to feel like a business only happens during certain hours during weekdays.
So make yourself available when other people can’t and help strengthen the bond between both parties by giving attention where it’s due; in this case, round-the-clock accessibility matters. One straightforward way to do this would be through various social media platforms.
- Include a personal touch in all communication channels
Every time you communicate with your client by either calling them up, sending an email, or talking to them face-to-face, make sure that it’s done with a human voice rather than sounding like a robot.
Make sure the message is well thought out, and ask yourself if this would be something you’d want someone saying to you when they’re trying to sell their product/service to you. If not, then take down what was written and try again.
This will help keep both parties engaged for longer periods since one doesn’t feel pushed against the wall every few minutes during conversations between sales representatives and clients.
Obtain client insights
One of the best ways to build a lasting relationship with your target audience and improve customer retention is by getting to know them. Dealing with both positive and negative customer insights is a great way to serve them better and build trust.
Don’t be afraid of damaging or constructive criticism as it can help you understand how your business could improve its services, products, etc., which will ultimately lead to higher satisfaction from the clientele. While some business owners are not comfortable delving into customer complaints, it’s crucial for the success of your business–and should be a top priority.
Once you get familiar and comfortable with your audience, you can better understand their needs, likes, and dislikes, which will help you stand out from the competition. This is when your business becomes more than just another supplier in their eyes–you become a solution to their problems.
Show appreciation
Finding loyal consumers can be difficult for retailers, but if they’re able to do so, these people are worth their weight in gold. Moreover, they will be more likely than most other customers to return time and again, which means that the likelihood of making a significant purchase is also much higher.
Show appreciation through rewards – giving away something free or at a discount not only makes them feel appreciated by showing that you appreciate what they do for you, but it also helps build trust between clientele and service providers.
In addition, offering incentives shows how confident you are about your product’s ability to provide value to potential buyers/clients on the fence about making a purchase.
Learn how your competitors are doing – the only way to honestly know what your competitors are up to is by closely monitoring their marketing strategies.
It’s important not just because you want to make sure that they aren’t trying anything underhanded, but also because it’s a good idea for everyone in sales and business development relationships with clients/customers to follow suit.
The more competitive practices you can pick up from other companies and implement into your business model (without necessarily copying them), the better you have at success over others in this industry.
Final words
It can be crucial for most businesses to build a relationship with their customers. It helps create a good reputation for the company and sells its products/services more efficiently. A business is only as strong as its clientele, so it’s essential to take all of these steps to build up your relationships with potential buyers.
If your target is to improve your brand engagement, it’s essential to know what the competition is doing. This allows you to learn from their successes and apply that knowledge to your brand strategy, which can help boost sales in a big way.
