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Building Solid Relationships for Lasting Success!

April 7, 2017

Relationship building is the core of all modern selling methods. Your ability to improve and maintain long-term client relationships is the foundation for your success in the media industry. Relationship building requires a clear understanding of the dynamics of the selling process as they are experienced by your clients.

Below are a few guidelines highlighted in Brian Tracy’s Customer for Life series that you may find helpful in promoting strong relationships with your clients:

    1. Propose a Business Marriage – For your prospect, a buying decision usually means a decision to enter into a long-term relationship with you and your radio station. It is very much like a “business marriage.” Before the prospect decides to buy, he can take you or leave you. He doesn’t need you or your radio station. He has a variety of options and choices open to him, including not buying anything at all. But when your prospect makes a decision to buy from you and gives you money for the product or service you are selling, he becomes dependent on you.
    2. Fulfill Your Promises – What if you let the prospect down? What if your product does not work as you promised? What if you don’t service it and support it as you promised? These are real problems that go through the mind of every prospect when it comes time to make the critical buying decision.
    3. Focus on the Relationship – Because of the various media options available today, the relationships that you build with your prospect are actually more important now than ever. The prospect doesn’t know how your radio station functions, or how he will be treated after he has given you his money, but he can make an assessment about you and about the relationship that has developed between the two of you over the course of the selling process. So in reality, the prospect’s decision is based on the fact that he has come to trust you and believe in what you say.
    4. Build a Solid Trust Bond – In many cases, the quality of your relationship with the prospect is the competitive advantage that enables you to edge out all other media options available. The quality of the trust bond that exists between you and your prospects can be so strong that no other competitor can get between you.
    5. Keep Your Prospects for Life – The single biggest mistake that causes salespeople to lose prospects is taking those prospects for granted. This typically happens when the salesperson relaxes his efforts and begins to ignore the prospect. Often times, clients walk away from their existing supplier or, in this case, advertising outlet because of lack of attention.

Once you have invested the time and made the efforts necessary to build a high-quality, trust-based relationship with your prospect, you must maintain that relationship for the life of your business and never take it for granted.

4-7-17

Source: Brian Tracy, Customer for Life Series

-Nicole Somerville, Sales Research Consultant

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