With quotas to reach and profits to gain, it can be easy for a sales team to zero in on a “transaction now” mentality regarding consumer relationships. While this mentality makes for quick sales and easy wins, it can leave customers with a bad taste in their mouths.
Building strong consumer relationships promotes customer loyalty and allows them to share their satisfaction with other potential consumers. So, to help transition your sales staff away from a transactional mentality to one centered around building consumer relationships, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their best tips below.
Young Entrepreneur Council members discuss moving toward a relationship-building mentality in sales.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Utilize Data
Data is key. We show the team the low amount of time it takes to do the extra discovery and connecting and the resulting sales transactions. When we invest more time on the front end, we weed out customers who are not a good fit for us, have fewer returns and have higher value sales. Showing that the time to close is similar to bigger results helps our team. – Marjorie Adams, Fourlane
2. Focus On The Big Picture
Your sales team doesn’t need to focus on the next sale; they need to focus on the next 10. Is customer service top-notch? Are you upselling? Are you building a somewhat personal relationship? The answers to those questions and more will help you get over the “transaction now” mentality and more into relationship building. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
3. Change Your Incentive Structure
If your sales strategy is predicated on quotas, your sales staff will be concentrated on transactions now. By incentivizing relationship building and brand loyalty, and shifting to solution-finding to close sales, you remove the burden of time. SEO services and digital marketing solutions sales are about the long game, and our incentive structure reflects that. – Matthew Capala, Alphametic
4. Encourage Certain Customer Metrics
Encourage the repeat customer metric as well as the new customer acquired metric. We tend to divide our customers within our sales team and review sales by customer every quarter. When repeat sales are low, we follow up by asking how many times the team member reached out to the customer. This encourages repeat sales and indirectly forces them to build a relationship. – Kripa Shroff, AK Multinational LLC
5. Demonstrate The Value Of Building Rapport
One way to help transition your sales staff away from a “transaction now” mentality is to explain the value of building rapport with qualified leads. You could host a small virtual training session for your team and discuss the strategic and statistical advantages of building trust with prospects. Don’t forget to give your team a boost by providing real-life example situations and solutions. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
6. Lead By Example
You need to lead by example and show your sales staff that building relationships is more important than just making a quick sale. Explain the benefits of taking a long-term view and focus on developing rapport with potential customers. Then, give them the tools and resources they need to be successful, such as access to customer data, social media monitoring tools and customer relationship management software. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
7. Invest In The Future
Build for tomorrow. When your focus is on the future, your day-to-day interactions become tools to make connections to build a strong tomorrow. Invest in the customer and the transaction as if they will be with you for a lifetime. That simple change in mentality will help the customer feel important and create that lifelong relationship with your brand. – Mary Harcourt, CosmoGlo
8. Cultivate Conversations
One key step in moving from transaction to engagement is fostering conversation. While “transaction now” relies on a one-way, linear conversation model, engagement is necessarily more dynamic and multi-dimensional. To do this, use chat, video and shareable features on your page and social media channels. This breaks the one-way communication model to create long-lasting relationships. – Shu Saito, All Filters
