ARIEL INTERMISSION: MANAGING CLIENT RELATIONS: JUST BE WITH THEM

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Expressiveness, one of the four components of “Presence” seems, at first, like the most needed skill for salespeople.  People expect salespeople to be personable, persuasive and energetic, all worthy skills but not enough by themselves. It is the more subtle elements of Presence; simply being Present and Reaching Out by showing empathy that are powerful and often overlooked skills that are vital to building successful client relationships.  To the energetic, action-oriented sales person they can feel like you are doing nothing. But what will differentiate you from the pack is the “being” not the “doing.”

Gabriella Salvatore, Vice President of Client Services, has developed her client relationship philosophy over a 20 year career in the learning industry. Her approach, while expressed differently, maps exactly with the fundamental skills of a fully present salesperson. She calls it Being with your clients.

How to Just Be With Your Clients:

1. Adopt a service purpose.  Don’t sell. Serve.  Be in the relationship for their best good, not yours.  Drop all worry about your goals, objectives and quotas. Focus instead on what your client is trying to achieve and harness yourself (and your goods or services) to that goal.

2. Listen to hear.  Don’t listen for your “in” or your “hook.”  Listen to take your client in, to empathetically “get” them: what worries them, what excites them, what are their priorities, how are they handling the competing demands on their time and attention, how are they measured, what matters to them, their organization and their clients?

3. Advocate not advocacy.  Many of us fall prey to the seller’s “push.” We talk and talk until our client is blue in the face.  Clients aren’t concerned about us and our world. They care about their world. So don’t spend your time in advocacy telling them all the reasons why they should choose you.  Spend your time as their advocate figuring out all the ways you can help them be successful in their roles and achieving their goals.

4. Deposition yourself whenever you can. Commit yourself to helping your client find the right answer not your answer.  Advise and engage them early and often not on how you can help but on what kind of help they need.  Commit yourself to finding it for them even if finding it means you lose the deal yourself.  Advising and engaging your client to serve them is THE way to build long standing relationships.

5. Partner not pushover.  I once heard it said that a good relationship is not the absence of conflicting views but rather a mechanism for resolving them.  Good client relationship managers don’t “yes ma’am” their clients. They engage in active dialogue, sometimes pushing back, offering alternate perspectives, challenging their clients to grow, helping them to move out to the horizon.

What are some of your most important client relationships and how you have learned to “be” with them as a path to partnership and long term, mutual return?

Tags: expressiveness,Gabriella Salvatore,InterMission Newsletter,reaching out,relationship building