Sell the relationship before you sell the product.
This is the formula you can use to convert today’s no to tomorrow’s yes.
Effectively you are telling the potential client, “Hey, its ok. In fact, I’m happy you already have an evacuation cover in place. In fact, I wouldn’t want you to change that at all. What I am asking is that you add to it at no cost to you. We send out safety tips monthly to our clients and I would like to include you in our newsletter. You can always unsubscribe.
I know we are the only ones doing this in the market and those on it continue to give us encouraging feedback on the practical tips therein. I’d like that for you. If that’s OK share your email address and I’ll see to it that you are included. Better yet, so that we customize it, let me know how many remote sites you have and your staff complement.”
You have just sold the relationship. Without stating it, you have opened a window slightly for the prospect to get a sneak preview of life with you. You know from experience that the grass is greener on your side of the fence but you want him to walk over of his volition. You want to pull him slowly in instead of pushing him to buy now.
Why saving face matters
And why? Two reasons. Resistance to change and saving face.
If he has been with the current supplier for almost a decade and has been defending him to the hilt to the decision-making unit, year on year, to then change on a dime puts his decision making abilities into question and might even feel suspect.
To help him save face, he needs a business-related reason to change. When of his own volition he tells the decision-making unit during a review meeting that you offer this and that and that other thing and, in fact, “The business made the decision to amend the evacuation procedures and safety protocols informed by your globally sourced researched tips,” it becomes an easier pitch for him, and change is seen as a natural consequence. Ditto, resistance to change.
Read: When the person on the ground must sell for you
Stack the value
But you don’t stop with the newsletter.
What other close to free but huge impact item can you stack on the newsletter? Is it free training on safety, a free assessment of their safety protocols, a talk to staff, a tour of your air ambulances in the hangar, complete with a chat with the medical crew, an ambulance on standby in their next marathon sponsored event? Visibility and subtle persuasion is what you are after.
By the way, the tour is particularly potent if you know their current vendor don’t own their planes, but sub-contract. The tour productizes the services – it makes insurance (evacuation) tangible. It’s physical evidence that you can deliver. It’s also ammunition for when the existing vendor comes knocking at renewal. “By the way, could we visit your hangar?”
Oops!
Benefits of selling the relationship before the product
Selling the relationship before the product, keeps the sales momentum going non-stop.
Yes or no, you have a response ready that gets you a foot in. Imagine what that does to overcoming rejection– it’s a superpower! In theory you never have to fear nor experience rejection. And if you are selling on annual contracts, you focus on what keeps renewals going by starting with what you do in between them.
Effectively, you seamlessly interchange selling relationship and product. Whichever comes first, you take it in stride knowing the other will soon follow. Of course if the product starts, the relationship follows immediately but when the relationship starts the product may take time to do so.
But even then, you are not seated on your hands hoping they change their mind, or, worse, waiting to show up a month to renewal to pitch afresh, or, be invited at the renewal meeting to pitch.
Worse, because chances are that you are a spare tire: proof that “We invited 3 vendors” (but we really had no intention to change – just to meet Procurement’s parameters)
The discipline behind it: from SME to corporate
The 21st century gives us a myriad of ways to sell the relationship before the product. Depending on your industry, this could mean sharing customized research reports (wealth management or investment firms), offering complimentary cyber security awareness sessions (IT companies), providing industry insights (consultants), sharing market intelligence (real estate firms), or sending practical maintenance tips (equipment suppliers).
A bookkeeper could send a monthly note on a tax deadline or a deduction small businesses miss. A printer could send a note on paper stock choices and which ones save money on large runs. The test is whether the recipient would forward it to a colleague even if they never bought from you.
Other examples include: hosting industry roundtables, sending benchmark data, offering a diagnostic or audit, running a webinar on a problem your prospect has publicly flagged, or simply being useful on LinkedIn in a way that costs you nothing but attention.
The underlying principle of relationship first selling
Notice the common denominator?
None of these requires the prospect to buy anything. Yet each creates an opportunity to demonstrate expertise, build familiarity and establish credibility. You are giving the prospect a reason to interact with you long before they have a reason to transact with you.
And you do this by delivering something of value. That is what makes it relationship selling rather than a gimmick. The moment the free thing is obviously a pretext for a pitch, the prospect feels it and the spell breaks. The newsletter has to be genuinely worth reading. The hangar tour has to be genuinely interesting. The research report has to tell them something they did not already know.
Eventually, circumstances change. Budgets open up. Contracts expire. Service disappointments happen. New decision-makers come on board. And when the conversation about changing suppliers finally begins, who do you think has the advantage: the stranger arriving with a proposal or the familiar professional who has been adding value for months?
Sell the relationship first
Stop chasing the sale. Start earning the relationship.
So sell the relationship before the product. Keep the momentum going whether the answer is yes or no. And remember that the relationship, once sold, is the thing that survives the renewal, the price increase, the competitor’s pitch and the internal politics.
The product can always be matched. The relationship cannot.
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