WHAT´s ABOUT
Business is about relationships and this dig into analysing them, degrees of relationship and some tactics on how to build them
In my opinion ( IMHO) the book look at business relationships with too much emphasis in a traditional personal relationship. Asking personal ,off -topic questions could actually be seen as a lack of respect of the customer´s time. Not that modern sales have to be impersonal and robotic. You can be chatty, personal and humorous but to the point . Establish a clear path to add value and then along you can add some collateral personal notes to spice it up
WHY IT MATTERS / KEY TAKE AWAY for Sales
Have a systematic way to engage with people with whom you don't naturally connect - people you meet for the first time, people you don't know well, and people you haven't connected with in a very long time.
I like the idea of analysing your business relationships and have objectives -based on mutual benefits
As a valuable point to take home is that It is good and worthy for sales to think about ways to put more effort to build relationships , like personalizing your outreach with something tailored to the specifics interest of each person.
This book could be an inspiration to go a bit further than the rest
KEY POINT/s
- Valuable business relationships have AIR - Access, Impact, and Results. Access is be able to reach and get responses .Impact means that you have you have an opportunity to influence the relationship. And results means proactively doing things to help each other succeed.
- Having the right mindset;
- Think well of yourself;Without the belief that you are capable of building relationships with the people you want to business relationships with, you won't get very far.
- Think well of others; you need to have a genuine desire to help other people
- Asking the right questions . the acronym FORM. It stands for family, occupation, recreation, and motivation (as in what motivates them in life)
- What was your high school like?
- What do you enjoy reading when you have the time?
- How did you decide to do [whatever it is they do for a living] for a living?
- Tell me something about your family.
- Doing the right thing: you don't build them on what you say, but on what you do and how you do it.One way to show that you value a relationship is to give inexpensive, unexpected and thoughtful gifts based on information they have shared with you
- Pyramid Hopping ; This is when you actively pursue contacts by leveraging the relationships you have with people on your Relationship Pyramid. When you ask for the introduction, you need to be as specific as possible about what you are asking for
NOTE 1- the author list a number of personal questions to use like
in my opinion using this in a modern sales conversation would be awkward , and in a email suicidal. I understand the point is to uncover what´s important for the other person. But that should flow AFTER the essential in business is covered .. focus first in uncover that there is a clear business value that you can add .. and only then very
NOTE 2- The Author tell us here about going extra personal in little presents or details ( like get an autographed copy of the customer´s favorite author) .. Again I see this as out of place in the current business world . I don´t even manage to do that for my partner ¡
BUT , one think that could actually be in line with this concept is adding a small layer of personalisation to things that usually expected as generic . The concept of sending a sales message with a personal video of yourself , mentioning something personal to that customer, like sharing a good piece of content that deals with an issue they have ..That could be seen as going a bit further than the rest
Conclusion
Building and maintaining meaningful relationships has always been, and always will be, critical to your success in business or your career.
As we continue to dive deeper into technology and tools designed to help us create connections with people, it's easy to forget that we still need to build real relationships with people based on principles that work.
This book give some hints about these principles and how to use them but I believe the key