the science of sales success and how to get rich_7

_{Relationship Selling}

_{The salesperson with the most long-term (that is, loyal) customers wins. You win because you made it to the coveted third and highest stage of a salesperson's career, which is relationship selling. You enjoy the rewards of your professional and personal relationships with customers. Years of meeting or exceeding customers' expectations will earn their loyalty.}

_{Purchase orders become foregone conclusions. Customers have confidence that you listen to and act upon what they say and always put their best interests first. The benefits of relationship selling are huge: Customers willingly share their needs, deadlines, competitive data, decision-making process, and budgets with you. There are no secrets among trusted allies.}

_{You answer each other's questions with vast amounts of valuable (that is, measurable) details. Everyone knows that by sharing information you can select the best solutions. You coach each other on the best way to make sales happen. With patience reserved only for long-term business partners, customers help to fine-tune your proposals until the right needs-solutions-price combinations shake out. They take your advice on how to sell proposals to their organizations, knowing they will receive fair market pricing. You can count on them to return with signed proposals. Surprises or disappointments do not often happen with long-term customers.}

_{You can even measure the value of relationship selling. Review what differential they paid for your relationship when competitors offered similar products. Past surveys suggest somewhere between a 5 percent and 8 percent premium. You will find that the measurable benefits of Column 2 justify a much larger price differential than the 5 to 8 percent that customers are willing to pay for your relationships. Measurable benefits are always worth more financially to your customers than your personal relationship is. The key is to motivate customers to understand both the value of your personal relationship and the value of the measurable benefits you provide. You now have earned a long-term customer.}

_{Furthermore, relationships are a two-way street. At what point do you recommend competitors' products because they provide more value in a given situation? You do so only when customers have measurable benefits that connect to competitors' unique strengths (products only they provide). After all, you would rather lose an opportunity than a customer. Do not worry; when you choose your market segments as outlined in Chapter 3, that occurrence will be rare. After all, the selling methods in this book are not concerned with becoming a referral service for competitors.}

_{In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, you also see the significant benefits of acknowledging to customers where your strengths lie—and where they do not. In return, appreciative customers do not ask you to work up proposals they will not seriously consider. In relationship selling, you and your customer place a strong premium on not wasting each other's time. You will see in these chapters that the value differential between yours and the competitors' measurable benefits—when known—can break down the barriers of mainly personal customer relationships.}

_{Understandably, long-term customers demand and consume a lot of your time. Yet, they are your best customers because they compensate (higher profits) you for the time you invest in solving their problems. They are the basis of the so-called 80/20 rule: 80 percent of your business comes from 20 percent of your (long-term) customers. Just make sure they consume less than 80 percent of your time so you get a fair return on your investment (more on this point in later chapters).}

_{You cherish relationship selling. You probably welcome the day when the repeat business from long-term customers means you never have to make another cold call (other than out of boredom) to exceed quota. However, if relationship selling is the prize, what are the other two stages of selling you must go through to win it? These stages are brinkmanship and courtship selling.}