The Art of Relationship Selling: How to Create Win-Win Outcomes That Generate Loyal, Long-Term Relationships and Maximise Profit

By Andrew Nisbet

We need trusting, customer-supplier relationships now more than ever.

Technology allows us to understand customers far better at a data level and gives us myriad new ways to communicate. But this explosion of data and technology also creates noise; noise we have to cut through to find trust.

Trust. It sits at the heart of all strong relationships. It is no less so in customer relationships.

And without trust, the sales process becomes transactional.

The dynamics of a technology-based, fast-paced, commercially oriented world cause many salespeople to fall into the transactional-selling trap. Customers tune out salespeople who waste their time and don't provide value. As a result, salespeople become disillusioned with the profession and seek quick fixes and less personal tactics to engage with customers.

The Art of Relationship Selling teaches salespeople to move away from transactional selling and toward purposeful, sustainable relationship selling to become the indelible magic that brings their brand…and purpose…to life, in a way customers can feel and trust.

If you're a salesperson who:

• Finds it harder to connect with customers and believes there must be a better way
• Is new to the profession and wants to know how to sell purposefully
• Wants to stay relevant in a changing world and be a 'linchpin' salesperson
• Wants more trusting and rewarding relationships with your customers
• Just wants to be better at what you do

…then this book is for you.

If you are a sales leader who:

• Worries about the loyalty of your customers
• Believes relationships can now be handled by technology
• Wants a better sales culture

…then this book is for you.

The shift from transactional selling to the art of relationship selling is a journey…and this book is your map.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grammar Factory Publishing
• Release date: Jul 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781989737392

Andrew Nisbet

ANDREW NISBET has spent over forty years selling, leading teams and developing long-lasting customer relationships. A coach and mentor, Andrew sits on multiple boards and, through his firm Shift Perspectives, he consults to companies in Australia and beyond on sales culture and customer engagement strategies.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

‘Selling is an art; and like all great art,

it can be mastered.’

AN ANDREW NISBET MANTRA

I WAS HAVING LUNCH WITH A FEW BUSINESS OWNERS THAT I had known for some time, and the conversation around the table quickly turned into a discussion about how customers do not value relationships any more.

How the old days are gone! The days when we could talk freely with the owners of our customers’ businesses and remind them of what we had done together in the past and, in turn, they would ensure they gave us their business. How we now have to deal with ‘procurement professionals’ who are only interested in the cheapest price. I listened intently as three different business owners each fed into the conversation about the ‘good old days’ and talked about the downward spiral they were now getting themselves into. (I promise I didn’t start the conversation; however, I was happy it went on to this topic!)

I waited for the space in the conversation where I could challenge them to consider a different viewpoint. When it came, my first question for them was, ‘Is your business model built on always being the cheapest price in the market, no matter what?’ Their collective answer was, ‘No way!’ The follow-up question was, ‘Okay, so when your customer asks you for the best price or tells you they’re getting better prices elsewhere, what do you do?’ All three answered, ‘We work on trying to win the business on value and generally will also drop our prices.’ So, I said, ‘The procurement person gets your value at a discounted price, is that correct? And if they come back to you with a better price from somewhere else, would you still try to match this?’ ‘Yes,’ was their collective answer. I then reminded them of their answer to my first question – that their business model was not about being the cheapest. And yet that was the trap they had fallen into.

The next question was a ‘what if’ question:

'What if you couldn't drop your prices and still had to win the business, what would you do?'

This question sparked some great conversation about new sales approaches to explore (take a minute here and think how you would answer this question yourself).

When we first started chatting, all these business owners could see were roadblocks and brick walls. They could not see any way forward in selling value when they constantly had to drop prices to win business. They were blaming the customer for being the problem. Value propositions and how to engage with customers to build loyalty had shifted, but the owners’ attitudes had not. However, when I asked the question above, something did shift. They realised that what they really had to sell was the relationship. By the end of the conversation, all three business owners had ideas that would open up opportunities for them. By the end of the discussion, they could see a way forward. They could see ways to have different conversations, with many stakeholders in their customers’ businesses, that they just could not see before. Sounds good, right? Even too good to be true? No…

With commitment and a curious mind, anyone can learn the art of relationship selling.

You may already be on a journey of discovery, or just starting out, but whatever your reason for reading this book:

It is a journey into re-imagining profitable sales and challenging 'old' thinking when these 'old' ways are no longer working.

WHY ME? WHY THIS BOOK?

I have spent much of my working life in relationship selling, from one-on-one business relationships to multi-level relationship selling. I have trained and coached many salespeople over many years, helping them to develop their understanding of what is required in relationship selling, while all the time further developing my relationship-selling artistry. But I didn’t start out this way…

Like many salespeople, in my early career I was driven by my need to hit sales targets.

No time was spent thinking about why I was successful and why a particular sale or customer interaction did or did not work. When I hit a brick wall, I used price to try to win the customer over. Sometimes this worked; however, more often than not, the customer would be enticed by another, even cheaper supplier.

I chased the sale, the dollar outcome, the reward, rather than concentrating on the value offered.

I did this because I just assumed the customer would know the value. I did not realise, in my early career, that great selling is about what is good for the customer and giving them a reason, other than price, to buy from me.

I found myself getting frustrated, questioning my abilities and falling into the discounting-price trap. I was developing an ‘us against them’ approach to selling. Each obstacle I encountered further strengthened my belief that selling was a ‘zero-sum’ game – for me to win, the customer had to lose.

Of course, it wasn’t always like this. But I believed that those sales where the customer and I ‘clicked’, where loyalty built quickly, were exceptions. I thought these customers were different from the vast majority. Naturally, I was committed to ensuring my customers were happy and being serviced well, and when they were happy, I knew I was able to build further trust and rapport. But the moment something changed in the customer’s behaviour, my belief in the fickle loyalty of customers was reinforced, and I went into the ‘I have to win, and the customer has to lose’ mindset. It didn’t occur to me that I needed to work harder on our relationship and help the customer to see the value of my offering. Instead, I blamed the customer for the problems I was having.

This mindset bubbled under the surface of my consciousness and helped create obstacles along the journey. Those obstacles were ones that most salespeople have experienced at some point. Perhaps you’ve experienced them yourself. Let’s see if these are familiar:

• Hitting a brick wall – This is one of the most frustrating and debilitating issues a salesperson can be confronted with. You find yourself saying, ‘I do not know how to move the sale forward. I cannot get the customer to budge and I do not know what to do next.’ When we experience this, more often than not, we continue doing what we have always done. If this does not work, we give up, blame something other than ourselves for our failure and move on to the next customer.

• Winning some sales but not others – When we ask ourselves why we win some sales but not others, the question feeds a belief that there are customers who ‘get it’ and customers who do not ‘get it’. Because of this ‘belief’, we attribute winning the sales to our brilliance as a salesperson and deflect the responsibility for the losses onto something or someone else.

• Fearing rejection – Nobody likes rejection, and salespeople get their fair share. This is a fear I struggled with constantly in my early days of selling. Every call I made seemed to elicit objections, which felt like rejection. I would have to psyche myself up before sitting down of an evening to make cold calls. If the first call went well, my confidence was bolstered and I would continue. If the first call did not go so well, I would feel rejected and this made me fearful of making the next call. I would tell myself stories about how the next customers on the list were probably not the right customers for me. Feeling rejected and afraid of being rejected again pushed me to use price as a way to develop the conversation. When I could not handle the objection, I just stopped calling that customer. This challenged my self-confidence, made me feel inadequate, and reinforced a belief that the best way to sell was to win the customer over on price.

• Having to compromise – Dropping prices, discounting your value, giving away services for free, accepting part of an order or extending terms are all examples of compromise. Compromises can leave you feeling let down, as they can seem very one-sided. It feels like you always have to bend over backward to satisfy the customer – and even then, the customer never really seems satisfied. Spending hours with a customer to develop the right package and solutions and then having to get into an intense negotiation at the end of the process is tough and demoralising. This happened to me many, many times. It fed my belief that for me to win, someone (the customer) had to lose. I know this also fed the same belief in the customer – for them to win, I had to lose. And so, the game continued.

• Not knowing what to say – When I first started selling as a teenager, I was told to go through the Yellow Pages, make a list of customers and call them. Simple enough; how hard could it be? But I was not trained in what to say, how I should open the conversation or how I could ‘warm up’ a lead before picking up the phone. Like most salespeople, I just jumped in headfirst and, more often than not, into objections and feelings of rejection. Where I could, I steered myself away from cold calling target customers and looked for the more opportunistic sales – the low-hanging fruit. For a long time, my approach was to pick up the phone first, try to organise a meeting, and then see where the conversation went. If I felt pushback, I brought out the trusty weapon I had used in the past – price! Picking up the phone to try to get a meeting, as the first action in customer engagement, is still the norm for many salespeople. But without preparation and knowing what you want to say, this approach will more often than not elicit an objection and end up with you talking about your product at a price.

• Failing at follow-up – Having the first phone conversation, getting that first meeting, can be hard. Harder still can be the follow-up. Many times, I felt great about the call or the first meeting, but when I tried to get another meeting, generally a week or two later, the process stalled. The customer pushed back again, and any momentum was lost. I could not understand, after having a good first conversation, why the customer would not want to keep the communication going. I had to learn that the purpose of the first meeting is to make sure you get the second meeting. That you have to set the first meeting up to ensure the second meeting is locked in before the first meeting finishes. But I didn’t know how to do this and was afraid of asking for the next meeting during the first one.

• Sacrificing margins to get the sales – For many salespeople there is a trade-off: ‘If you want me to grow sales, then I will have to sacrifice margin. If you want me to grow margin, then I will have to walk away from sales.’ It feels like a game of constantly trying to manage both – like a vicious cycle. Inevitably sales revenue wins the ‘tug-o-war’, because it’s easier to make sales than improve margin, and so the downward spiral takes shape.

If these are some of the problems you face in your sales career, then I know this book will help you find the answers.

How much we experience these selling obstacles depends on the type of salesperson we are, and what our beliefs and our perspective are. The big shift that has to take place if you want to get over these obstacles is to move from being a transactional salesperson to a being a relationship salesperson.

• The Transactional Salesperson – This salesperson’s whole objective is to get the sale and move on. Products are sold very early in the process, and these salespeople are likely to believe that price is a key factor in why customers buy. They think that they win sales because of their ability, and when they lose sales it is not their fault.

• The Relationship Salesperson – This salesperson understands the customer and knows how their offer adds value to the customer’s business. Their objective is to win the customer, not the sale. This salesperson understands that price is not the key reason why customers buy.

Illustration 1 highlights the shift from transactional to relationship selling. Importantly, it also highlights the fundamental changes in our beliefs and perspective.

Illustration 1: The transactional to relationship selling chasm

Most salespeople’s capabilities sit somewhere between transactional and relationship selling and will move between both, depending on the circumstance, the existing relationship with the customer, and the salesperson’s mindset at the time. Many salespeople are not even conscious of the dynamics that see them move backward and forward along the scale. To make a conscious decision to master the art of relationship selling involves taking a giant leap over this chasm. It is a big shift from the salesperson’s single goal of ‘winning the sale’ to the goal of ‘winning the customer’.

Follow the customer, not the sale.

This book is about why you need to take this leap from transactional selling to relationship selling, and how you can do it. It is all about ‘crossing the chasm’.

HOW THIS BOOK WILL BENEFIT YOU

I recently conducted a workshop with the GMs of a mid-sized public company in which we discussed their selling culture. One of the GMs said, ‘Customers are not giving us the time they used to. It’s hard to get to meet with them and they’re far less willing to give us their time than they used to be. The customers have changed. We need to change our approach.’ He’s right, the customers have changed – yet not the way you might think. The emotional drivers that sit behind customers’ buying decisions have not changed. The buying emotions are the same as they always were, but now there is a whole lot more noise to cut through. The noise of being bombarded with emails and phone calls from salespeople wanting their valuable time or the constant barrage of messages when they open up their social media feeds. Customers no longer have time to spend with salespeople who add no value and try to sell them something they don’t want to buy. Those salespeople are calling because they want something for themselves.

More than ever, salespeople are needed who empathise with their customers, understand their customer’s world, add value to their customer’s business, create win-win outcomes, and can reinforce the human connection – the place where trust develops. Salespeople are needed who can cut through the noise and distractions and stay focused on the customer. These attributes are the fundamentals of mastering the art of relationship selling.

Salespeople who continue to develop their understanding and skills with regard to relationship selling, and take that leap from being a transactional salesperson to a relationship salesperson, will be highly sought after.

This book will take you on a journey from ‘start to finish’ of the relationship selling process, with insights and understanding provided at each stage. It will challenge some of your current beliefs and behaviours and show you new ones – if you’re open to pushing through the comfortable to the uncomfortable. With practice, these new beliefs and behaviours become the comfortable.

‘People don’t believe what you tell them,

They rarely believe what you show them,

They sometimes believe what their