Building personal relationships so you truly understand your customers – how they prefer to communicate and what they expect of you – leads to long term commitment and the opportunity to continue to deliver exceptional products, services or insight.
Neglect this relationship and you may find your competitors stealing a march on you.
It seems people still buy people
I remember going on one of my first sales training courses during my career at Coca-Cola. I can’t recall a great deal of the content (it was 25 years ago) but the phrase “people buy people” stuck with me.
It is an often-used expression, but I wonder if it still holds true in today’s commercial world? Haven’t we moved on to more disciplined procurement strategies and processes, where the traditional roles of “seller” and “buyer” are lost amongst digital communication, online tendering and methodology that depersonalises interaction between human beings?
Of course, it depends on what sector you are operating in and what your value proposition is.
We offer education, facilitation and consultancy, so it’s only natural that customers are very interested in us as people, as much – if not more – than our solutions and products.
But what about traditional B2B sales, where much of the transaction is done online or at best on the telephone?
How important is your relationship with suppliers?
I asked our own customers how important the relationship is when dealing with suppliers selling a product, rather than consultancy.
I was expecting a resounding “no longer important” and “the commercials and specification of the solution is 99% of our decision”.
Surely working with nice people is just a nice to have?
The response surprised me. Relationships do still play a part in selecting a supplier. As one customer put it: “We ask ourselves if we want to work with them. Will we get on? Do they understand us? And will they be responsive to our needs?”
Chemistry, whilst difficult to measure, is a significant part of the decision. Not just personality, but the respective culture of the organisations that will be partnering and forming a relationship.
This is harder to understand in an online tender process that barely connects the two organisations through human interaction. You may be operating in an environment where it is almost impossible to establish quality relationships.
However, a lot of business is still done through building relationship and connecting people.
Understanding your customers
It also became clear that, whilst it can play a part in selecting a supplier, the “people buy people” theory is even more important when keeping customers.
Our ability to not only meet our customers’ needs but to anticipate them, is largely down to the quality of our relationship and interaction. Not in the form of an American style “Howdy call”, but through high-quality, two-way communication appropriate to the preferences of the people you are dealing with.
Effective communication
We use a programme supported by Everything DiSC Sales to help us understand our own selling style and those of our customers.
The ability to use our emotional intelligence to flex and adapt our approach, depending on the style and preferences of our customer, allows us to “get on their wavelength”.
Effective communication is to think about how others receive and interpret your message, rather than how to transmit it.
Perhaps the “people buy people” recollection from my Coca-Cola course still holds true.
Learn more about how the Everything DiSC Sales profile can help improve your sales performance.
