Building Customer Relationships

Course Overview:

Without productive, long-term customer relationships based on trust and customers' perceptions of the value you add, they view buying a problem rather than a solution. Hence, you start each customer contact at ground zero and repeatedly work uphill toward closing the sale. The key to leveraging greater productivity from your sales team lies almost entirely within their ability to create and maintain strong client relationships - a process that is not addressed in most traditional selling skills programs.

Your sales professionals will come away from this course ready to develop customer alliances by applying new skills and practices for each of the three phases of consultative selling.

Target Audience

• Sales Professionals

Course Length

• 2 1/2 Days

Course Outcomes

Your sales team will win more sales, higher value sales, stronger ongoing customer relationships, more repeat sales, reduce customer "shopping" among your competitors, and greater career and life satisfaction. More specifically, this course enables them to:

• Plan and prepare more effectively for each sales call, so that they can anticipate the client's business situation and needs, their own approach to meeting those needs, and the competition's relative positions
• Develop specific objectives for the contact or sales call and a clear visualization of the call and its outcome
• Execute sales calls using effective listening and questioning skills to more quickly and more confidently understand the customer's interests and needs
• Recognize moments of truth that define both the quality and longevity of sales relationships and respond more effectively in each of those moments
• Develop rapport with customers faster and maintain it on a more professional level
• "Put the pieces together" to develop a personal strategy for avoiding slumps and increasing their opportunities to sell on a streak
• Refine strategies and prepare for future calls by reviewing what does and doesn't work after each call

Course Activities

In order to build strong customer relationships, participants must understand the critical concepts and build the skills needed for the three-phase consultative selling process. To achieve this, the course includes:

• Case simulations and group exercises about the emotional and tactical elements of selling
• A video case study to identify the impact style of influence has on relationships and results
• A self-assessment instrument on personal motivation
• Role plays for getting appointments and closing sales
• A team exercise on managing moments of truth
• A group exercise for avoiding selling "slumps" and maintaining a positive mental state
• Individual exercises to ensure application and reinforcement on the job