We all know that the better relationship we have with a prospect or customer, the easier it is to sell.
But ask a salesperson how to develop great relationships, and you’ll only hear, ‘it takes time.’
While building great relationships is a time-consuming process, we don’t have to hope that relationships happen. Instead, we can take the initiative on building great relationships before our sales meetings so we ensure we’re delivering value and moving the sale forward.
To learn how to be intentional about our sales meetings and building relationships, we sat down with Scott Hubble, CEO of Nucamp, a sales leader whose business model depends on great relationships in his industry. He helped us develop a system any salesperson can use to be more intentional about how they spent time with prospects, sell more, and serve more.
Because we’re trimming hope from our sales strategy, we’ll use the acronym TRIM to guide us through creating a system with a trigger, ensuring it’s repeatable, building in ways to improve it and of course, ensuring it’s measurable and getting us results.
T – Trigger: Scott recommends triggering this system before we meet with prospects. There are things we can do to review past meeting notes, educate ourselves on changes in our prospect’s industry, and simply review the prospect’s position and roles that will ensure we’re making the most of our time on their job site or in a meeting.
R – Repeatable: This is where the real value of a sales system comes in, because we want to be as present with our prospects as possible if we want great relationships. We can’t do that if we’re focused on all the steps we want to complete. The repeatable parts of this system can be used during any sales meeting to ensure we’re not only gathering information but also developing a relationship.
Scott says to start first with addressing the person you’re speaking with before you talk about the product you’re selling. Find out about their concerns, the changes they’re experiencing, and the challenges they’re struggling with. If this is all you accomplish in the meeting, you’ll be building a better relationship than most salespeople do in 10 meetings.
Next, start with your story. It’s a good idea to practice your story before you step into a buyer meeting, so that it’s concise and speaks to the solutions you provide instead of just the history of your company. Ensure you highlight what makes you different from the other providers your prospect may be speaking with.
Third, review your ‘ask’, the next steps you’ll want your buyer to take, and ensure the decision maker is in the room or that you can schedule a separate meeting with them. Building relationships with influencers is great, but we want to be intentional about the way we’re spending our time so we can serve more customers, not just have the biggest rolodex.
Next, ensure you’re expressing what you need to move forward. Do you need a signature, a verbal agreement, or information so that you can customize your proposal? If you don’t ask, your buyer probably won’t do the work for you.
Finally, ensure you’re owning the next step by finding out what you can provide to them that will provide value. It may be a professional resource, a comparison of your product against others, or a personal resource from your network. To ensure your relationship strengthens, own your part in making it happen.
I – Improvable: To improve the depth of relationship you achieve in your meetings, Scott says to ensure you’re being consistent. Look at your meeting notes and see if you’re following all he steps in your process. If you’re not including them, how will you ensure they come in front of you during your next meeting?
Another way to improve this system is to look at your existing customers and ensure you’re prioritizing meeting with them if there’s opportunity for new business. You can also do this with your prospects to ensure you’re spending your time efficiently.
M – Measurable: To measure how well you’re building relationships in your meetings, Scott says to look at short and long-term metrics. Short term things to measure are the amount of engagement you receive after your meetings, as that will indicate the depth of the relationship you’ve built.
Long-term, measure the volume of deals you create from your meetings. That will tell you if your system is working to deepen relationships, because where relationships grow, deals flow.