3 Sales Tips To Develop A Long Term Customer-Relationship

I was about to start eating my delicious Pork-Sate meal last night with a nice cold orange juice for my drink to complete my dinner when suddenly someone called out my name.

It was Ms. Rizza, one of my closest customers when I was still selling Ice Cream for Magnolia (San Miguel Foods Premium Ice Cream Brand). We haven't really seen each other for quite sometime and yet she was still very fond of me.

I invited her to join me and my wife for a sumptuous meal in one of my favorite restaurants in Cebu. Our "little chat" took almost an hour, and I noticed that my wife is slowly feeling out of place. (There's a sales mentor lesson here, I promise).

A Starter's guide to selling - Obtain, Verify, and Transmit!

Based on our previous lesson (if you're new on my sales mentor lessons click here), we already know how important it is for sales people to have enough account knowledge to close a sale. Learning a little bit of the prospect's background will definitely take you a step closer to closing the sale.

And now you ask, how am I supposed to gather account knowledge (customer information)?

Well its easy actually - read a book on basic selling.

Just kidding... It is my commitment to you as your online sales mentor to help you in your selling endeavors.
Here are the basic steps on gathering account knowledge:

1. Ask

Many sales people tend to focus on selling right away, saying that only action can result to a sale. But without any information about your prospect, you are like a soldier going to war without any kind of firearm.

The 3 Important Types of Account Knowledge - It Grows Your Buyers List

As promised, we will now start on the new set of sales mentor lessons to add to your selling skills arsenal. Today, the most important sales technique that everybody knows but is usually taken for granted is - knowing your prospect.

Obviously, the more you know your prospect, the easier it is for you to do the selling since you know his needs, wants, desires, and specially his personal preference. Secondly, once you know enough of the customers' attitude, you can make "custom" sales approach towards selling to a specific prospect.

In formal sales training this approach is called "getting-the-account-knowledge". From the word account knowledge, it means that it tackles on the number of information you as salesperson knows about your existing and future account.

There are many simple ways where we can actually gain  a customer's account knowledge gradually. I stressed the word "gradually" since in selling, time is of the importance. In any sales situation there is always two parties involved, your side (the salesperson) and the prospect's side. So the faster you develop a very good relationship with your customer, the faster you gain account knowledge and trust. Simply put, "gradual" means as you build trust, you gain more account knowledge.

Believe In What You Sell!

This is the start of a new series of sales mentor lessons. Since we already got through the needed mindset and basic definitions, we will now discuss on the actual selling process.

How to start selling.

In a formal sales program, often, the sales training begins directly with the discussion on what is sales flow, persuasive selling, closing techniques, but for me this is all useless unless you start with this mindset - "Believe in what you sell".

Being a sales mentor and a salesperson myself, I've seen many salespeople directly jump start without really understanding their own product and more importantly, believing in their own product.

Believe me, being a "loyal customer" alone of what you sell improves 50% of your average closing. When you believe and also use what you sell, there's no objection strong enough for you.