Relationship selling – the way to customer’s heart

What is relationship selling?

Relationship Selling is a sale technique that concentrates on the interaction between the buyer and the salesperson. It does not focus on the price and details of the product and is 6 to 7 times more expensive to gain new customers. Based on the belief in building a long-lasting and ongoing relationship with clients to encourage repeat purchases, it inspires your existing customer and further marketing through the mouth of word and referrals.

Loyal customers have a greater chance of spending more money on each visit, and they will shop more frequently as compared to new or other customers. Thus, they will continue to buy from you regardless of the price. Building relationships with your customers and taking interest in their world notably improves sales and retaining customers. Start your conversation with a potential customer with something that is not your sales pitch. Send a blog post that you think your prospect will find interesting for a longer period.

Relationship selling vs transactional selling: the difference in mindsets

The opposite of relationship selling is called transactional selling, in short, transactional selling means exchanging money for goods.

Transactional Marketing is a marketing strategy used by firms to target customers to make one-off sale transactions which are short term in nature, and the customer contact is very low as they stress more on gaining new customers as a result, customer retention or loyalty is extremely low.

Whereas in Relationship Marketing, the primary aim is to retain and satisfy customers by providing values to them, which are long term in nature and with high customer contact.

As we have discussed, both techniques of marketing are important for the business entities and must exist side by side, so as to increase the customer base. However, relationship marketing is capable of capitulating better results in comparison to transactional marketing.

How to use Relationship Selling to connect and convert leads?

Relationship selling has a direct impact on the success of your marketing and sales strategy, you should understand the principles and qualities to build a long-term relationship.

Integrity and reliability

Having integrity and reliability at work is one of the most important qualities for building long term relationships with your clients. Communicate with your customer honestly and openly. It simply shows how trustworthy you are. Admit the mistakes, if any because, it is ok to accept and resolve them. Integrity is not just important on a personal level, it is also vitally important at a workplace level. Organisations known for their integrity perform better.

On the other hand, reliability helps to keep your customers and increase efficiency. Customers like to know what they will get if you are selling them any faulty or ineffective products. They keep an eye on your behaviour as it symbolises the reliability of your brand. If they find it helpful and useful, it opens doors to creating a long-lasting relationship.

They might not waste their time and money on your product in future, but they will repeat the purchase if you are reliable.

Increase Trust

Trust is the natural result of thousands of tiny actions, words, thoughts, and intentions. Trust does not happen all at once; gaining it takes work and time. It might take years of calling on a certain client to break through and fully gain their comfort and trust. For any relationship to last longer, it is important to increase the trust between you and your customer. The best way to do this is by delivering your customer what you committed, taking care of the deadlines and so on.

Sound human in your business communication

Instead of directly talking about your product or starting with the sales pitches, focus on building trust. Try to sound natural to them, write fun and personalized subject lines for your cold emails, simplify your email signature and mention something you and your prospect have in common.

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