Going Beyond Relationship Selling To Become A Trusted Advisor
I’m here to dispel the myth about relationships and selling new business. I’ve been studying the misunderstood relationship selling model for quite some time. One of the factors that never made sense to me was how anyone can expect a friend to give you their business when you haven’t earned the right to it. I know that I am throwing rocks at a few of you, but don’t push the delete key yet. Relationship Selling works; you just need to apply a clearer definition. A recently published study redefines the criteria critically important in making a sale. The study is intriguing and eye opening as it breaks through old myths around “relationship selling” to rank the criteria that are really important to the client when making a buying decision.
I’ve taken the liberty of summarizing a few of the major points of the study. The number one criterion for making important buying decisions is whether or not they TRUST the person. The second is whether or not they RESPECT the person, number three is the REPUTATION of the company, number four is the product’s BENEFITS, and coming in fifth is PRICE. What surprises many people is the eleventh reason a purchasing decision is made. It’s how much they LIKE the salesperson. You may at first disagree with the order, but I challenge you to really think about what’s important to you. How do you define a business relationship? What’s your definition of TRUST? Does having someone take you out golfing build trust? No!
So, if you are currently staking your sales career on being likable with large expense accounts, you will manage your career all the way to the poor house. Why? As someone who travels extensively working with sales professionals around the country, I concur that trust is the number one factor in building a business relationship. Trust is the foundation for creating a powerful relationship and when broken or non-existent will act as a wedge in a relationship that removes any hope of making a sale.
Note: The best sales people have not only developed the skills and knowledge necessary to build trust, they also understand how to communicate their unique knowledge and experience in such a way that they are recognized as the trusted authority with-in their given field. They have a special quality I call “known-for-ness” that provides a level of trust.
A question I often I am often asked is how to communicate or package your unique talents and skills so that the market recognizes and places a distinctive value on your unique talent. The answer is teaching sales professionals how to promote and position themselves. I am aware that lately there has been a lot of hype on the subject of Personal Branding lately that Tom Peters brought to the attention of millions. I too believe, based on working with successful professionals there is quite a bit of validity to the concept of building and extending a Personal Brand.
In the 21st Century it’s a must. Personal Branding is going to be the mantra of the professional for the next 100 years as markets become increasing commoditized. As a speaker specializing in prospecting, I’ve given 57 talks on Personal Branding for professionals around the country. Next month is no exception; I will address 500 Financial Professionals on Personal Branding in an opening Key Note address. So now you are asking… What does Personal Branding have to do with becoming a Trusted Advisor? It goes back to the number one reason people buy from you — TRUST.
Trust is the forerunner to everything else in professional sales is applied through Personal Branding by way of prospecting and marketing (i.e. Client/Practice Development). First, let me explain what a brand is. A brand is a represented ideal that exists in the minds of an individual. A brand competitively distinguishes itself usually with a perceived advantage over the competition. That’s right, I said a perceived advantage. Let’s take Wheaties as an example, people buy Wheaties because they believe {key word} that they will run faster and jump higher all because they are eating wheat flakes out of a box with a picture of an athlete. A brand is all about managing the beliefs for a specific segment of the population.
However, a Personal Brand is different, whereby a brand of a product or service is manufactured; a Personal Brand is based in authenticity. A Personal Brand is based on the unique talents, natural abilities and skills of the individual. It is further strengthened by the person’s experience in an area of specialization extending the Buzz on the individual. One of my favorite quotes by Albert Einstein is “Experience is knowledge. All the rest is information”. Leveraging your experience as it relates to your natural ability (genius quality) is what successful people have been doing for years.
Why think about developing a Personal Brand? Well, believe it or not, you already have a brand, people already “see” you in a certain way. They instinctively know what you are good at and what you’re not so good at. So you might as well focus on optimizing your brand, building congruency with your natural talents and how the world sees you to redefine the reality you do business in. Your brand positions you as a known value in your market. Another question I often get is what do you mean by optimizing your brand? The answer is simple really. It has been psychologically proven that you can only be known as one thing in someone’s minds-eye. That’s why people who do more than one thing wonder why they never get referrals.
Note: If you try to be all things to all people, you market will not know what to believe. They will psychologically choose the individual who has specialized in the area; they perceive them to have a certain expertise that you don’t have to serve their particular need.
Remember, the people who are known for something are the one’s that have the first in mind advantage over the competition. They have become “the choice” and not just “a choice” within their market. The unique distinction of a Personal Brand removes objections from the buying process, especially among products and services that “look alike”.
When I consult with a partner in a professional services firm; their biggest question is how do I become a trusted advisor? Your unique value needs to be communicated to your market in such a way that your listening (target) market immediately knows the value that you bring to their business. In order to accomplish this important goal, you can no longer be all things to all people. You must communicate your specialization to build the trust within your market segment or niche that will increase your sales success.
There are volumes of examples of individuals who’ve utilized Personal Branding to become a Trusted Advisor. These select few have learned to generate business momentum resulting in the establishment of them as “the choice” within their market niche. Interested in learning more about how professionals can take their business to the next level using Personal Branding tools. Contact Joe Heller for more information.
Editor’s note: Joe Heller can be reached at (713) 927-4494 | 1 (888) JHELLER | joe [AT] joeheller.com
(c) 2011 Heller Marketing International, All rights reserved Worldwide.
How to Find a Hungry Market
The most important skill you can have as an entrepreneur is to know where to find a hungry market that craves your product. Knowing how to find a “hungry market” is the single most valuable skill you will ever develop. What I am about to revel to you has been a closely guarded secret by the most successful people on the planet for centuries.
The secret… find a Hungry Market!
The majority of people on the planet are unaware of the secret. They are trying to get in front of any market; right, wrong or indifferent. The problem is that when you adopt this approach no one cares what you are selling. Calling on the wrong market is a time waster and the greatest creator of mediocrity in business today.
After all, why buy sales training to advance your sales people or hire a marketing firm to help you with your message when you are calling on the wrong market. Calling on the wrong market is the most common mistake in business and the most overlooked. They think by calling on people in need that they will be catapulted to great success; however that’s a lie that has been told around business campfires for years. You MUST sell to people who want your product, not merely need your product.
Granted, the market that you’re calling on may have a need for your product, but I’ll wager they are not staying at home laying awake every night yearning with desire for your product. In the eyes of your market, your product is ho-hum and barely raises an eyebrow.
With this in mind, you can run the best ads, and send your trained salespeople into the field to sell the best possible product in the world. But it does not mean a thing if you don’t have access to a group of people ready, willing and able to buy what you have to sell – a “hungry market”.
What determines a hungry market from a market that has indigestion?
There are 3 Must Haves for determining a hungry market:
#1. You must be able to identity and easily reach them
#2. They must be hungry [want] for what you have to sell
#3. They must be proven buyers who will pay a premium for what you are selling
Note: Whether you are selling a product or a service, you are really selling the benefits for the prospect that is packaged in your message (aka Unique Selling Proposition). The USP is crafted from hunger your market has for a product. In other words you cannot tell your market what it needs; you can only give it what it wants.
When you hear of someone enjoying spectacular success you’re more often than not seeing an example of someone who found a ‘hungry’ market
and worked it intelligently. Professionals who enjoy this type of spectacular success have shelved the old selling model and learned the ancient secret of the hungry market.
Note: The Old Selling Model is where you build your product first and then find your market. The New Selling Model is where you find a Hungry Market and then build a product to quash the markets hunger.
Sure, you can build a business that’s missing one or more of the “3” M’s, but why would you want to kill yourself serving a commodity market when serving a hungry market is so much more lucrative? The intelligent people reading this article will grasp my message and escape from the commodity vortex where they only compete on price to a “hungry market” where you can live like a king.
The goal of this article is to educate you on becoming a marketing genius. That’s right it’s easy to become a marketing genius; a marketing genius knows how to find and serve a hungry market. Awareness of hungry [under served] markets within your existing market can make you rich. And it’s a lot easier than you think.
Hint: Here’s a way to discover a Hungry Market — The Magazine Stand Technique
Think about it… every year, billions of dollars in sales start between the covers of magazines. Now, I’m not talking about big magazines like Forbes or Time – those are for Madison Avenue types who have lost touch with reality. They spend small fortunes on advertising that produces a big nada at the cash register. (If you feel like wasting money on big dollar traditional advertising on poorly targeted markets just send me the money. I’ll put it to good use.)
The secret of the hungry market is hidden inside hundreds of special interest magazines that cover practically every subject known to man. These magazines are wildly profitable and have been around for years on subjects such as knitting or collecting bottle caps and even raising earthworms. None of these topics interest me personally, but it PROVES the existence of a lively, hungry marketplace for these topics.
Think about it… how big of a niche do you need to sell into? I know a consultant who has a very specialized niche in software; there are less than 300 companies in the world that meet the “hungry market” criteria. Sounds small… after all how can anyone earn a living with a universe of 300 prospects?
She earns more than $15 million a year serving this niche.
Size does NOT matter!!! A market hungry for your products are more motivated than any liberal activist group. They don’t just daydream about the things they’re passionate about, they take action. They buy, and then they buy some more in order to appease their hunger and occasionally they will super-size the order.
Here’s the take-away lesson from all this:
Keep an eagle eye out for niches that are hungry and when you find it make sure the people in it can be reached, they are passionate about their interest, and they’re buyers. The rest is easy… Go For It!
One final note; in order to find and position yourself as “the only choice” inside a hungry market you must become an avid student of lead generation and marketing strategy. I’ve developed a toolkit that gives you powerful 1-2-3 lead generation techniques that can skyrocket your success. You can find it on my site http://joeheller.com and click on “programs” to learn more. It’s a great resource from my personal library to yours.
Editor’s note: Joe Heller can be reached at (713) 927-4494 | 1 (888) JHELLER | joe [AT] joeheller.com
(c) 2011 Heller Marketing International, All rights reserved Worldwide.
Your Greatest Competitor — Indifference
Who is your greatest competitor? Throughout the history of marketing, professionals have always faced great adversaries that compete for their highly coveted piece of business. Is yours the large multinational company or the boutique that somehow seems to call on your best customers? No, the most formidable competitor that has haunted professionals for decades is the invisible competitor, the unseen attitude of customer indifference.
Why is indifference such a challenging competitor? Psychologically, indifference is rooted in our belief system. Its endemic, an attitude, a viewpoint held by your customers that you must change in order to close your sales. In addition, while you are more than able to compete head on against the visible products of your toughest competitor, the balance of power shifts when you are forced to compete against the invisible competitor of the human mind.
Indifference is not based in logic, but lies embedded in your client’s perception. Many factors can contribute to client indifference, including familiarity with an existing product, or “may be” false satisfaction with a competitor’s product, or the failure of the buyer to notice additional needs, or their failure to recognize the unique benefits value of your product/service. However, the most prevalent factor by far is simply complacently, the age-old adage, “but that’s what we’ve always bought.” Indifference comes from the client’s opinion that what you are selling is a commodity-like product with relatively no distinction nor value over their existing product/service.
How do successful professionals confront the competition of indifference? You attack the issue strategically, armed with a thorough evaluation of a potential client’s current business practices. Indifference is overcome when a salesperson maps out a plan to resolve areas of customers’ hidden frustrations by uncovering previously unidentified needs. In approaching indifference, the sales professional must understand the psychological considerations that are tied to changing an attitude. Your client needs to be motivated to change.
To combat indifference, you need to acknowledge that indifference affects your customer, gaining permission to ask probing questions that increases your understanding of the customer’s specific needs. By having a questioning strategy, you help the customer gain an awareness of the needs and problems your product can solve. Probing questions permit you to explore problems that may have been lying dormant, and/or hidden; buried for years under by the initial adoption of poor business practices. Analytical probing allows you to understand the customers’ core business; including new business strategies the client is planning, and to define the competitive pressures within a market niche or segment with the goal of helping the customer realize problems or needs of which they were previously unaware.
Having a questioning strategy designed to overcome indifference permits you to discover who the other suppliers are that are currently doing business with your prospective customer. By evaluating how satisfied the customer is with the current suppliers, you uncover business needs they would like to improve. Additionally, strategic questioning provides an opportunity to investigate the customer’s strategies and goals, allowing you to align your product/service with the achievement of their business objectives. Once a customer’s business objective is in the open, you can determine how your product can assist your customer in meeting their stated business goals.
Note: Effective probing that ties questioning and strategy together allows the sales professional to become consultative in their marketing approach focusing on the customers business needs. Probing also allows you to gain insight on how your customers are positioned in the market, allowing you to evaluate how effectively they are competing, identifying who their competitors are, and whether they are gaining or losing market share respective to the specific products and segments they serve.
Raising the customers awareness about their current level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, helps identify the consequences of leaving things unchanged, promoting the cost of a the need to facilitate change. If the questions are carefully crafted by your understanding of their business, the customer discerns the immediate financial implications of not acting in a timely manner, advancing the breakdown of the indifference barriers.
Remember the 80/20 Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle states that 80% of sales are made by the top 20% of all professionals. As a result, the lower 80% make 20% of the sales. One major failing of the lower 80% of professionals is a tendency to introduce an assumed need the customer has not verbalized though probing. When a salesperson introduces a need the customer hasn’t verbally expressed, the customer sees the sales person as “pushy,” destroying any comfort level that’s been built. The professionals poor judgment causes the customer to raise their barrier of indifference toward the salesperson’s perceived high-pressure tactic.
Learning to recognize indifference by applying the appropriate strategy and tactics to combat it will continually advance the sale and lead to greater success in selling. Occasionally overcoming indifference happens immediately, but more than likely conquering customer indifference takes a long-term commitment.
Note: Questions that a professional asks must drive a business solution. Here are a few examples of questions to ask to gain a mutual understanding of a need between you and your prospect.
How do you feel about the results you are getting now? Are you on plan to achieve your 1/3/5 year goals? Are there any competitors in the market that are impeding your growth plans? How does that affect your business operations/sales? What impact is that having on your new client acquisition? Customer retention? Your product quality? Your productivity? Your cash flow?
In summary, indifference is a psychological competitor that lies in the attitudes of our customers. Remember, in a questioning strategy there are more than just using open and closed ended questions. There are questions that are designed to capture account information, help the customer recognize problems and what the problems will cost if not addressed, and questions on how to orient the customer to distinguish that your product is the right solution that will drive results to reach their intended business goals.
Final Thoughts: I’ve been talking about conquering indifference on the buyer side in order to win new customers. However, I’d like to point out that 68% of the customers a business looses are rooted in indifference from the professional. From the customers’ perspective, they believe that the supplier has stopped treating them appropriately with care and empathy, no longer valuing their relationship. Remember, that it takes up to five times more effort/energy/cost to win a new customer verses maintaining a profitable relationship with an existing customer. Indifference is a critical issue faced by all, causing the loss of more client relationships than any other reason. You must take care of your customers because they are the most valuable assets your business has.
One final note; in order overcome this powerful competitor — you must become an avid student of lead generation and marketing strategy. I’ve developed a toolkit that gives you powerful 1-2-3 lead generation techniques that can skyrocket your success. You can find it on my site http://joeheller.com and click on “programs” to learn more. It’s a great resource from my personal library to yours.
Editor’s note: Joe Heller can be reached at (713) 927-4494 | 1 (888) JHELLER | joe [AT] joeheller.com
(c) 2011 Heller Marketing International, All rights reserved Worldwide.
