Marketing Competence :: Basics

The days of the hard sell are dead. You saw what happened to Gordon Gekko with his "Greed is good". Customers today are simply too smart and too educated to be "conned" or "sold". The key is to make them want to buy - from you!

You need to build a "relationship" with your customers and prospects.

What is a relationship based on?

Trust. Think of your personal relationships for a moment. Is it possible to have a relationship with someone you don't trust? Is it true that your best relationships are with those people you trust the most? The same principle applies with a business selling products and services. People will buy from those businesses whom they trust the most.

So how do you build trust in a business relationship?

In the same way as you build trust in any relationship - by going out of your way to give, and to continue giving consistently until that client or prospect builds up a trust in you, and what you are offering.

Research conducted in the early 90's by US Life Insurance Association, "LIMRA" analysed the habits and traits of their best salespeople against those of their average salespeople. Their findings were stunningly simple. The average salesperson stopped trying at 2/3 contacts. The top salespeople made up to 7 contacts. They developed a relationship of trust through their consistency - and they were top of mind when that prospect wanted to buy.

Salespeople are a "beast unto their own"! By nature, their enthusiasm is generated by the next sale - their focus is, by their very role - short term. Most simply will not take the effort to persevere with prospects, and most certainly will not make the effort to build an ongoing relationship after they have sold that prospect.

What is the benefit of building a relationship with a client after they have bought?

Quite simply, not only repeat business- but even more importantly - and potentially far more powerful and profitable - is the prospect of referral business.

The success of the multi-level marketing has a lesson for today's marketers. Join one person, and they will join others who in turn join others, and the business grows exponentially.

Clients, once they have bought from you - also have the power to grow your business exponentially. And we all know that a referral is a qualified lead and much better sales prospect - especially if they approach you!

Don't you feel better when a friend or colleague tells you about their successful experience with a product or service they have purchased rather than you starting out "cold"?

So come back to the "7 Steps". Assume you or your company has just sold a client their first purchase from you. They are obviously at their most susceptible and most impressionable at the very early stages after their purchase - because your product is something new to them. Your objective now is to build a relationship with that client to turn them into an advocate - a source of referrals - for your business.

You do this by winning their trust to refer that business to you -without the need for you to ask! How?

You find out as much as you feasibly can about that client - this process need not be complicated - just a little more basic information which is incorporated into the information your salespeople normally collect when they are taking an order- you incorporate it into the existing processes. Your salespeople will be introduced into RM without the need for massive culture changes which have so often destroyed relationship marketing intentions. (Once they have seen results, and can prove to themselves how well RM is helping them to make more sales, they will be susceptible to increased levels of sophistication - as they KNOW it benefits them. But overkill in the first instance may lose them forever!)

Clients can then be "grouped" or segmented" into like interest or trigger areas. You develop a contact strategy based on those segments - which gives them 7 contacts from your business over the first 12 month period. (Timeframes will differ according to the type of product being sold - but this timeframe generally suits products and services which have a longer product life cycle.) These contacts are made up of 5 personally addressed and signed one page letters, with information directly relevant and of value to your client. The other 2 contacts are personal telephone calls from either the salesperson or a senior executive - but with genuine "giving" reasons for the call. (For example - 3 months after the sale to ensure the client is happy with the product - and on the yearly anniversary.)

Remember that your objective with this strategy is to gain sufficient trust from that client to talk enthusiastically about your product or service to others. Your clients become your unpaid sales force! If you have not taken the effort to find out enough about your client and to ensure that the information which you are giving them is of genuine value, you will not build that trust.

The second and subsequent years do not need the intensity of contact. If you have carried out this part of the strategy sufficiently, you will have created a position of trust. Newsletters - brief, easy reading, and of value, can be used say 3 times per annum, with a personal telephone call or letter providing a 4th "human" contact.

Can you imagine you yourself would be reacting about a company who had followed you up in this manner after say a 2 year period? Say you had bought a house from a real estate agent who had followed you up like this. You are sitting down one night with a group of friends or family - and someone mentions they are thinking of selling their house. What is your likely reaction to be - even though you have not once responded to any of the contacts from your agent?

You are likely to suggest that they contact your firm. Why? Because it makes us feel good to assist our friends/family by telling them about a positive experience which we have received in a similar situation, and by giving them the opportunity to achieve the same. Provided we have built up that trust element, we will want to share our positive experience with others to help them.

Convinced? So the next step is how to implement this process. Tell me, do you simply map it all out and leave the responsibility to your salespeople? No way!!! Because salespeople's motivation is on the next sale! They simply will not maintain this - except for the exceptional few. Technology plays a critical role here - the entire process needs to be automated - so that it happens without someone having to remember to do it. And the statistical information you collect can then form an invaluable sales and marketing management tool. But more on this in the next issue - if you are interested!