Say hello to Zena “the Warrior Princess” She’’s a Nanuk which is a cross breed of an Alaskan Malamute and Alaskan Husky. But this Nanuk, Zena has been bread down to toy size. She is as big as she will get at two years old! A 60 lb dog in a 15 lb body! What joy she brings to the household. In the video you can see she loves to be petted and will encourage whoever is petting and loving own her to continue. She will reach for more. I’m sure there are many pet owners who experience the same thing.
This is exactly why prospects buy from who they choose to buy from. The relationship. Yeah, we all know salespeople are good at relationships and that is why it’s critical to be ‘more better than good.’
Building trust early is the only way to insure we get the business. It’s not good enough to just be good at relationships. Salespeople have to be great to stand out! I call it the Dudley Factor named after my father in law. No matter where Dudley was, people flocked to him. After years of observation I came to the conclusion: Dudley had a habit of making other people feel better about themselves after they had an encounter with Dudley. Science actually shows that when someone experiences an act of kindness, the person on the receiving end experiences a release of endorphins. It’s the cocktail of hormones serotonin, adrenaline and dopamine that are released in the body and provides a feeling of well being. Science also show’s that the person providing the act of kindness receives the same cocktail. And anyone that is observing the act of kindness generates the same cocktail.
So why aren’t more salespeople more focused on making their prospects and clients feel better about themselves? Objective Management Group’s database of 2.3MM show’s that salespeople are not nearly as good at Building Trust and they think they are. Sure anyone can build a trustworthy relationship after 3 or 4 meetings. But how many never get the chance to have a second meeting because they were too focused on themselves, the product, the service and what the potential sales means to the salesperson. And they didn’t have the Dudley Factor.
The top 10% of salespeople only have 54% of the attributes to build trust in the first call! The bottom 10% score even worse at 36% of the attributes we measure. See the list of attributes below.
When you make your clients and prospects feel better about themselves after an encounter with you they are like Zena, they will continue reaching for you and will want to keep you close!
Let’s marry this with the current economic times. Companies are laying off. Supply chain has put a stress on relationships. Competition is getting trickier. Prices have to increase. Companies are cutting budgets and the list goes on. Any company that is not helping their sales teams to become elite in Relationship Skills is losing business to the competition!
Wanna see how your team measures up? Click here: http://stats.objectivemanagement.com/41