Speaker 1 0:19

Welcome to the Toilet Paper Salesman Podcast, episode 11. Today we're going to be talking about how to build strong relationships. Many times, as a salesperson, you're going out and you're calling on accounts and you're wondering why you can't get an account from point A to point B. In other words, you can't get them to buy from you. So you go along and get stalled in the process and you're wondering why you get stalled. And so today we're going to talk about what it is that builds strong relationships.

Speaker 1 0:50

Let's talk about top salespeople. What does it take to be a top salesperson? 75% of a top salesperson is showing up and following up, being likable and credible. 50% of a top salesperson is showing up and following up. That's all you need to do. You need to show up and follow up, show up and follow up. An additional 25% is being likable and credible. Show up, follow up, likable, credible 75%. In other words, those four things get you to the place where you're at the top 75% of all salespeople. The next 25% is your sales skills, in other words, your knowledge, your sales abilities, all those other things that go along to the top 25%, which puts you in the top echelon. Where most salespeople fail is obviously in the 75%. They might show up but they don't follow up. They might be likable, not so credible. So if you're missing any one of those four elements, you're going to be at a severe deficit in sales.

Consistency Builds Confidence

Speaker 1 2:01

You're making a cold call and you call in a customer right from the beginning. The first time that you contact that customer, you're starting the sales process. The most important thing in the sales process especially in the beginning, but really all the way through a customer relationship is your consistency. Consistency is the key to getting the customer to build confidence in you. So how does consistency work? I mean, it's pretty simple, right? You go in. You say you're going to be there at 10 o'clock. You show up at 10 o'clock. You show up before 10 o'clock. You have something to talk about. You do a presentation. You're supposed to follow up on certain items. You consistently follow up. You're consistent in your follow up. You're consistent in everything that you do. Every aspect of how you deal with this customer do that is consistency. If your call patterns then need to be consistent, you need to be there every other week, however often your frequency is. You need to be frequent After the meeting. You follow up. Those are consistent things.

Speaker 1 3:15

The consistency then builds confidence. So the customer starts to build confidence in you and in the beginning you are your company. You represent your company. That's the only thing the customer knows. So it's your consistency that builds confidence that you could be trusted as a salesperson and as a company.

Building Multiple Customer Relationships

Speaker 1 3:37

Consistency builds confidence. Confidence turns into trust. Once you have trust in the customer, once they start to trust that you're going to be consistent and that you're going to follow through and that you're going to do the things that you say, then you can build a relationship. You can't build a relationship without trust. You can't get trust without confidence and you can't get confidence without consistency. All those things work together to build a relationship. Once you build a relationship with the buyer, then you can start to get traction within a customer and you'll get orders because now they have a relationship, they trust you. They say, okay, this company, I can trust and do business with this company and this is gonna be a good thing. The last thing the buyer wants is a problem. The last thing they want is is a nightmare of a supplier, because buyers are very busy and they don't have time to waste on a supplier. That's going to cause them all kinds of headaches, and that's why the consistency is so important in the beginning, because that builds ultimately the trust and the relationship. One other thing about relationship is you need to build multiple relationships within your customer. The biggest mistake that a salesperson makes is that they only make a relationship with the buyer. They don't have relationships with the sales managers, they don't have relationships with the ownership, they don't have relationships with anybody else in the company, and then what happens is when the buyer leaves. Now you're in trouble because the buyer leaves and a new buyer comes in and say the new buyer likes your competition. If you haven't built relationships through the company, you could be easily thrown out. If you do build relationships within the company and you know the owner personally and a new buyer comes in and tries to throw you out, it's going to be a lot more difficult because the owner has your trust or you have a relationship with the owner who then you can go to and say, hey, I'm being thrown out of your account, and then they could step in. You have a much better chance to hold on to accounts for a long time if you build relationships with everybody within the company.

Speaker 1 5:52

I'm going to tell you a story about how I won my wife over and that is 40 years ago, coming up here pretty soon. I met my wife at work. The first date was set up for a Friday night Right before that afternoon. Friday afternoon, my roommate from college shows up out of nowhere and wants to go out for the weekend and I told him. I said, hey, mark, I've got a date tonight. I really like this girl and I've got to go on this date. He stayed in my apartment. I went on the date and it's probably a good thing I did, because if I would have canceled that date at the last minute, I may not have gotten another chance. We have a great date. We have another date. After the first date, I called her the next day. I was consistent when we made a date. I showed up on time. When I said I was going to call, I called. I was consistent all the way through.

Speaker 1 6:47

Then she was dating someone from college in New York City. Even while we were dating, they were still dating. I knew this, she didn't make any bones about it, and so we were dating and I was here locally with her and he wasn't. So he was at a disadvantage. So it was a New Year's Eve and my wife decided to go to New York to visit her boyfriend and I knew this obviously wasn't happy about it, because I really liked her and you know I wanted to have a more steady relationship and she was kind of like I'm not sure.

Key Takeaways and Closing

Speaker 1 7:21

So she goes to New York, she has a terrible time and what I did is I bought her a dozen roses for when she came home. Now I had no idea that she had a terrible time, but it was awful. She walks in the door, she sees the dozen roses and I win. And that is a microcosm of how the sales process works. And 40 years later we still have a great relationship. That's it in a nutshell. Consistency builds confidence, confidence turns into trust, trust becomes a relationship. If you remember those three items, you will be a much more effective salesperson and you will have better relationships throughout your whole life. That's all I have for today. Who says selling toilet paper isn't glamorous? Thanks a lot and have a great day.