By Eberhard Niklaus

Transforming Sales Through Trust: Building Meaningful Customer Relationships

In today’s rapidly changing sales environment, building meaningful customer relationships has become the cornerstone of success. Gone are the days when flashy product features or unique selling points alone could secure a deal. Modern customers want partners, not just service providers-problem solvers who understand their challenges and deliver value beyond the transaction. In a world where products and services often seem the same, the strength of the relationship you build with your customers becomes your most important advantage.

Selling Has Changed

Over recent months and years, numerous articles and blogs have expounded the need for salespeople to adapt to the changes that have taken place in selling by focusing on building strong “customer relationships”.

I am probably giving away my age now, when I refer to a time in my life as a salesperson when there was no Internet, no social media platforms, and no cell phones. However, with the advent of global communication as well as technological developments, customers have become more knowledgeable as well as more demanding.

Customers no longer want to talk to salespeople; they want to talk to “problem solvers”. Hence, salespeople need to become a “consultative partner” to their customers. To do this, they need to have a deep understanding of their customers’ business as well as their industry. (add 1x internal links to other blogs)

Need To Adapt

Salespeople who do not adapt to the changes in sales will be like the green bug in a green field, only to be exposed when the season changes the green field to a brown field. If the green bug remains unwilling or unable to change, it will soon be “gobbled up”.

To thrive in sales, the gurus keep reminding us (correctly so) to build strong customer relationships. One of the most important reasons for this also relates to the dawn of a new era, where the world has become a global village.

In earlier times, salespeople focused on highlighting the Unique Selling Points (USP’s) of their products or services. For example, I used to sell air fresheners for public bathrooms (restaurants, hotels, hospitals, etc.).

One of our USP’s was the fact that our air fresheners came with anti-theft brackets, thereby reducing the chances of theft. I recall in those days being super impressed with my car dealership when they phoned me the day following my car’s service to ask if I had been satisfied with the service. I was blown away. Well, things have certainly changed.

These days, traditional differentiators (USP’s) do not assist salespeople in securing sales.

Many of these differentiators, which were unique before, are now expected to be part of the normal offering.

• Customer care and follow-up service previously amazed customers, but now it is expected.
• A 24-hour service provider was previously an exception, now it is the norm.
• Kevin Bohren, head of a well-known computer brand was quoted as saying, “It used to be that when we launched a new product it had 6 months of uniqueness, now it’s a long weekend”.

How To Adapt?

Yesterday’s selling advantages are today’s expectations. Products and services are looking more and more alike.

Which is why salespeople are urged to develop the one thing that their competitors cannot replicate, namely the relationship they build with their customers.

Developing a relationship of trust and “fellow feeling” does not happen overnight. Firstly, you need to invest time in building relationships. People buy from people they like and trust.

Statistics suggest that a customer will only buy from you after five to seven “touchpoints”. They cannot learn to like and trust you sufficiently after only one or two contacts. Hence, salespeople need to have a strategy for engaging with prospects over an extended period, with at least five “contacts” (meetings, phone calls, messaging, and other forms of communication). I imagine the more these engagements are in-person, the more opportunities for building trust and fellow feeling.

Add Value

However, do not have these engagements simply to “tick the box’’, as it were. With each engagement, make sure that you add value so that the prospect does not feel that you are wasting his or her time.

How, you ask. It starts with you being sincerely interested in them and their businesses. Be aware of their needs, wants and interests. Then match these with the endless variety of valuable facts, information, ideas, concepts, products and services, which are out there in the universe.

It will help you to remember that at this stage of your sales journey with the prospect, you are not thinking about selling your product or service (yet). You are focused on building trust. Simply do things that add value to your prospect, regardless of whether it relates to your product or service.

For example, you may be a salesperson for a company that sells training materials. During a visit with a prospect, you may identify a challenge they are encountering with their data network. While it has no bearing on the products that you are selling, you may have some contact with people in the industry, or knowledge of other customers who successfully manage their networking needs.

• Why not consider investigating these sources later, with a view to then referring your prospect to the relevant sources as possible solutions?

• Can you imagine how amazed they would be at the effort you made on their behalf, without any apparent benefit to yourself?

Or you may sell a security service. While visiting a prospect you may notice that they are experiencing considerable frustration with their cleaning company. The full staff complement is not always on duty, and the staff are ineffective in their duties. The management of the cleaning company are slow to respond to the problems, and your prospect is at their wits end!

Again, this problem is totally unrelated to your service. However, you may be aware of other clients of yours who are all delighted with a specific cleaning company, mainly due to them being franchised, and consequently offering a personalized service with prompt attention to customer needs. This is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your interest in the needs of your potential client, so why not facilitate the process of “matching” a likely solution to your customer’s need with the knowledge you have of the industry you operate in.

The recipe for success involves being alert to the prospect’s interests, needs and requirements, and being observant to opportunities that will add value to your prospects. This calls for awareness on your part. As you read articles, books or other reading material, continually think of which prospects may benefit from the material you are enjoying. Or, as you listen to communication via various channels, ask yourself which of your prospects will appreciate you sharing it with them.

Deliver On Your Promises

It is also essential to deliver on your promises. When a prospect does express a need for something, perhaps some information or even an estimate for a product or service, ensure that you act on the request as speedily as possible. In today’s marketplace, speed is of prime significance. Customers expect prompt service. Do not disappoint them at the first opportunity you have to add the value you have been working so hard to implement, even if it is for something insignificant.

If you add value at each “touchpoint” you have with your prospects, you will gradually develop the trust you are aiming for.

The Law of Connection

I was listening to Justin Cohen, a well-known South African author and trainer, at a business breakfast one morning. He told us that he had the privilege to attend a networking event in the USA whilst visiting there, and met another well-known author and business coach, John C. Maxwell (who had also previously been a political advisor to George Bush, Jnr.). One of the books Maxwell had authored was entitled “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”. Justin asked John which of the 21 laws he believed was the most powerful, to which John responded, “The Law of Connection”.

Yes, your ability to connect with others will go a long way in achieving success. If this law is so valuable, it goes without saying that salespeople do well to carefully consider how effective they are at connecting with others.  There are many aspects to this.

Firstly, what is meant by “connecting” with others? You need to touch a heart before you ask for a hand. To “touch a heart” you need to be someone others like (as mentioned earlier in this article).

In this regard, you may find the “25 Traits of a Pleasing Personality” by Napoleon Hill very useful in measuring up how you are doing with exhibiting a pleasing personality.

Desirable Traits

To be likeable (meaning others enjoy you as a person), you need to exhibit several traits.

Positive Attitude

No matter how good your technical selling skills may be, it will count for nothing if your attitude is negative or even mediocre. Prospects will very quickly sense that you lack enthusiasm. You will waste both your time as well as that of the prospects. Do not even attempt to build relationships if your attitude is not proclaiming to the world that you are right up there where it counts! This component for success is a pre-requisite for success in selling, and for that matter most other activities.

A positive attitude is not something you are born with. It is acquired or developed. It requires constant effort, but as with anything which is repeated regularly, it ultimately becomes a habit. You develop the habit of positive thinking.

Positive Attitude Is a Choice!

Having a positive attitude requires constant application. The world is full of negative forces, and if you give undue attention to these negative forces, you can become a negative person. Imagine that you spend much time and effort preparing a beautiful garden. In time, you will produce a lush, charming and attractive garden. However, to maintain the garden’s pristine condition, it will require ongoing attention and effort. If you simply leave the garden to fend for itself, it will soon deteriorate into a dilapidated, overgrown patch.

The same is true of your attitude. The world is also full of positive forces. Feeding your mind with positive thoughts, associating with people who are positive, reading positive material and going to seminars will produce an amazingly beautiful mental garden. However, if you do not sustain this process, your positive thinking will soon deteriorate, much like a garden that has been unattended.

We are molded by our environment, (which will influence our outlook on life). As adults we can choose our environment. They include the association we select, and what principles we adopt. We also choose what enters our minds by what we read and listen to.

Here are some examples of things that have shaped my positive attitude in the past:

• Several years ago, when Brian Joffe was still the CEO of Bidvest, one of South Africa’s most successful companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), a financial journalist interviewed him on the radio. As usual, Bidvest’s recently published financial results impressed, despite a severe economic downturn (in fact, the country had experienced a technical recession). Asked about the reason for their ongoing success, Brian Joffe responded by saying that as Bidvest, “we choose not to participate in a recession”.
  That attitude reinforced my deliberate choice to focus on reasons for success, even when others allowed countless reasons for failure to shape them.

• About a year ago, at a networking event, one of my mentors was giving a short speech to the audience, again during an economic downturn. He shared his personal belief with us: “Just because the economy of the country is shrinking, it does not mean that my personal economy has to shrink”. Wow! Talk about attracting success.

If your attitude is generally negative, you will find it virtually impossible to develop trusting relationships. You need to ensure that you regularly exert yourself in maintaining your positive attitude, just as a healthy and attractive garden requires ongoing care and attention.

Your positive attitude should be complimented by positive qualities that serve as a signal of your spirit, a demonstration of your personality, which attracts people to you, much as a light attracts insects.

One thing that has always helped me to maintain a positive attitude is to have fun! When one plods through life day after day, and has no fun, it becomes very challenging to stay positive. My goal is to do at least one thing for fun each day! Sometimes this may be a simple act of treating myself to a cup of coffee following a successful sales presentation.

Your endeavours for building meaningful customer relationships should bring you many opportunities for having fun! Enjoy what you do. Seek opportunities to have fun. It is great to wake up and look forward to what you do, knowing that you are going to have fun each day. Fun inspires a positive attitude.

Developing Trust and Fellow Feeling

It is good to ask yourself. “Who am I?” Analyze your character with a view to confirming that you are trustworthy. Do you trust yourself? Can others trust you? Building trust-generating qualities as part of your character is vital to succeeding with Relationship Selling. If you have a lack in this regard. You will find it difficult to be confident and thus display a positive attitude.

A positive attitude requires that you, firstly, can trust yourself. After all, if you cannot trust yourself, how can you expect others to trust you? Build trust in yourself by making promises to yourself that you then live up to. These can include promises such as waking up at a certain time each morning to do some studying. Going to the gym a certain number of times each week, and so on. As you fulfil these promises, you build trust in yourself. Having trust in yourself will develop your self-confidence, and you will inspire others to trust you as well.

Trust is not a result of words. What builds trust is actions. While words play a role by signifying intent and creating hope, they eventually mean nothing if you do not follow them up with action. Learn to create trust through your actions. Rather refrain from making promises that you are not confident of following up with actions.

To illustrate: An employer tells his staff that if they all contribute to achieving a certain turnover for the company, he will pay them a bonus. Despite the staff achieving the turnover goal, cash flow constraints prevent the employer from fulfilling his commitment.

While his intent was good, he has destroyed the trust that may have existed in that relationship, because his actions did not back up his words. Despite explaining the reasons to them, will they easily trust future promises he makes?

It is therefore prudent to think about our words before making rash promises that we cannot back up with action.

Continuous Personal Development

It is important for all of us to periodically take stock of who we are. We need to evaluate our character with a view to establishing whether we are “attractive” to others. Would you want to be friends of “you”? What improvements could you make to be better able to connect with others? Such self-analysis should be a regular activity for you.

One of your prime goals relating to your self-development. Should be to enhance your mind-set, with a view to continually improving your value as a person.” You want to augment your ability to connect with others. This involves developing aspects of your character such as your charisma, magnetism, communication skills, leadership skills, and your ability. Make people feel better about themselves.

If you give people what they want, you will get what you want. This principle is magnetic; the more you give people what they want, the more you will attract what you want. Develop the art of influencing other people to feel good about themselves, and they will give you what you want. In the process, do not expect business. Focus on helping people and developing trust, and then you will attract their business.

The Following Principles Characterise People with a Magnetic Character:

• Value themselves
• Love people
• Exhibit compelling behaviour (especially listening skills)
• Are great conversationalists
• Connect with people

Make it your goal to develop the art of connecting with people. It is one of the most useful skills to aid you in succeeding with building customer relationships.

Enjoy the rewards of customers who choose you, because you care, listen, persevere, help, add value and give advice.

Most of all.

Continue to grow your value as a person. Your compelling behavior, driven by the honorable principles you exhibit, attracts people and strengthens your ability to connect with them.

In conclusion, keep your focus on this unchangeable principle:

You can have everything that you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want.

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