Customer Relationships

In order to combat this frustration and fear of product obsolescence, producers offer you over-the-air updates that upgrade your product’s software to perform new tasks and make your user experience, in general, more satisfying.

It’s that time of year. The holidays loom, there is a chill in the air, and countless articles appear providing guidance to sales representatives about how to close the year strong. The five, ten or twenty best strategies are outlined in checklists to insure end-of-year success. “Contact every client” is an action often recommended, as is “Revisit prospects who have chosen another vendor.”

We’ve all heard the sobering statistics that winning a new major account costs far more than keeping one – depending on the study you read, perhaps twenty times as much. And we’ve all heard how even a small increase in a firm’s overall major client retention rate has an exponentially positive effect on revenues and profits. We also know, of course, that, on the flip side, decreases in retention rates produce similarly negative impacts, often devastating and long-lasting.

We all know the statistics. Most selling organizations derive 80% of their revenues from 20% of their clients. Winning a new major account costs up to 20 times more than keeping a current one. And even a small percentage increase in a firm’s major client retention rate can have an exponentially positive effect on revenues – while similar decreases can produce negative financial impacts, often devastating and long-lasting.

Here are five simple ways we can improve the quality of our communication with the people who are currently buying from us and expand and deepen those relationships over time.

Read Time: 8 Minutes

While watching a Sandler conference video on Sandler Online, I was struck by something Bill Bartlett, a Sandler trainer in Chicago, said. I am paraphrasing, but the gist of the message was that through bonding and rapport, you earn the right to ask the tough questions that cut through the clutter and get to the truth. One of the best ways to start that process is to identify the person’s DiSC profile and use that knowledge to build rapport.

As a salesperson, my goal is to create equal business stature and a mutual decision-making process. In doing so, the prospect and I are equal. If I have to ask for the order, then I tip the scales of equality to me and doing business is not a mutually beneficial decision. Pressuring the prospect to buy upsets the balance of equality also.

As a beginner, you ask a lot of questions. You might feel kind of silly, at first. But, asking questions benefits you. You learn a lot and, more importantly, you learn specifics that will help you in the future.

In this situation, the bomb is, of course, not an actual bomb. If it were, the Sandler Rule should be to run like heck away from it. Anyway…The “bomb” is a potential problem or a reoccurring problem with your prospect.