Oct 10 2007 7:04AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (1) |
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Once upon a time “relationship selling” was the “way to sell”. Matter of fact, there was nothing better. If you were good, you gained an undeniable advantage. But in today’s market with today’s customer it’s about as useless as well, you know what I mean. 

Relationship selling began in the mid-eighties and reached its peak in the mid-nineties. Since then, it’s reared its ugly head more than a few times. And it seems that whenever sales people get in a jam, they revert to some deep belief that “being nice” is the key to selling. 

Neil Rackham talks about the same thing. He once did a survey to test the myth of relationships and their effect on making the sale. He began by asking sales people if they had a strategy for selling. And what he found was interesting. If they answered, “relationships, or relationship selling”, he later proved that they really didn’t have a strategy.

Relationships happen because the sales process works. It works for you and most of all it works for your customer. That old “I’ve got to sell myself first” mentality isn’t what today’s customers are looking for. Just think about it. Today’s customers aren’t buying something that works for you; they’re buying something that works for them.

Yes, I agree that you have to “be nice” to your customer and they won’t work with you unless they’re comfortable with you, but that doesn’t call for you to believe they have to like you to buy from you. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Customers like you for one and only one reason. They like you because they like your sales process. And if they like your sales process it means they enjoyed working with you and had a good experience with you.

So when you hear overhear a customer saying, “We just loved her”, don’t get confused. They’re not talking about you they’re talking about working with you. And those are two different things!