Relationship Selling

Sales training techniques can be a misleading term. Techniques used in communicating with people can be transient. They can work for one person and not another. They can work in one situation but not a different one.

When your method of communication is based on principles it will work in every situation. I don’t know who said this originally but it illustrates the point:

“Techniques are many, Principles are few.
Techniques will vary, Principles never do!”

When you engage in a natural conversation you relate with people in a way that puts the focus on them.  People will feel good about you and they will respond to you in a positive way. Relationship selling skills aren’t about techniques but rather about communicating in a way that’s been with us for a long time. It’s a way of communicating that will be with us forever. You see, it goes beyond selling – it’s the essence of building relationships. It’s where the R word ‘rejection’ gets replaced by ‘relationship’.

Conventional selling is based on selling by persuasion but it is fast losing its lustre. In fact if you looked up selling in an old English dictionary the definition you would find would be “to serve” and “to exchange”.  Instead of trying to persuade others to do what you want them to do. The relationship selling approach allows you to help and serve people. It allows them to motivate themselves to change their situation.

If you have read Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” you will remember  Habit 5 “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood”. By engaging in a natural dialog and truly listening you will understand your customers needs and be able to offer them a solution.

So it really doesn’t matter which sales training techniques you use but rather the way you communicate those techniques.  What works for one will not always work for another so trying to create a “cookie cutter” mold for techniques is next to impossible.

There is little point in mastering skills that do not produce tangible improvements. Much as we would like to clone a top sales personality we can’t. What we can improve is sales training techniques that are teachable, measurable and produce predictable  outcomes.

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