Business Development and Relationship Marketing
Business development is the center of all sales and/or marketing. Look, if you are interested in expanding or growing your business, developing yourself individually, want a personal development plan or want learn how to better yourself as an individual and salesperson, then this is the place for you.
I’m always excited to share these interviews each and every week on how critical Relationship Marketing is for Business Development.
This blog post features Mike Weinberg.
Mike is a:
- Sales coach
- Consultant
- Speaker and;
- Author of several books including 2 Amazon best sellers
Mike’s passion is “helping companies and salespeople win more New Sales.”
He’s a been there done that kinda guy, reaching the top of the sales performance chain, and now he is teaching others how to achieve what he has.
Just as you are, everyone is interested in how to simplify the sales process and win more sales!
It’s quite evident that Mikes an expert at new business development & sales management, and he is on a mission to simplify sales.
Mikes impressive bio includes:
- Top producing salesperson in 3 companies
- Named a top sales influencer by Forbes and other publications
- #1 sales influencer to follow on twitter
- He’s consulted on 5 continents this past year
Folks, I love interviewing people who have been in the trenches doing what they teach others to do. And Mike certainly is one of those who I truly appreciate contributing to the professional sales world.
Learn some of the best business plan examples when Mike shares that the biggest struggle in business development as a salesperson, is creating relationships that lead to new sales opportunities…
Relationship Marketing Principles
Relationship marketing principles are changing the way salespeople do their business development. In fact, for those of you who are new to this blog, I have a book titled The Power of Human Connection: How Relationship Marketing is Transforming the Way People Succeed. Lots of feature stories in here, about 25 different feature stories from people of all different industry talking about how they incorporate relationship marketing to better their business, to increase referrals, and to increase their bottom line.
Mike explains that there are a lot of people in sales that are good at various aspects of selling. Such as being good at:
- service
- retention and;
- product knowledge
A lot of salespeople struggle when it comes to initiating a new relationship, creating a sales opportunity. Simply being proactive. That big word “prospecting” kind of makes people freak out. There’s a lot of controversy around and experts telling us that in today’s world, the customer will come running to you when they are ready. They are saying that prospecting and cold calling people doesn’t work.
Simplify what it takes to put together a successful new business development focused attack plan. And often, an essential component of building new business is the prospecting to initiate the dialog, to get somebody into a discovery conversation so you can understand more about them and their situation and their needs.
Have a dialog don’t pitch
Everybody is interested in the sales process. In today’s day and age, there’s a brand new sales process. I mean it’s not like it was 10, 15, even 5 years ago. The sales process has changed.
For this business plan example, let’s kind of skip past prospecting. There’s a process to the sales approach. I know prospecting is part of it, but we’re going to skip through. You’ve already found someone. You’re now creating a relationship and seeing if you could do business together and you’re going to do it in a simplified way.
Simplifying is about putting together a successful new business development focused attack plan. An important component of building new business is the prospecting to initiate the dialog, to get somebody into a discovery conversation so you can understand more about them and their situation and their needs.
Start by building a relationship with the prospect. This takes their guard down. Do everything possible to come across as a friend, adviser or consultant who wants to work with them and help them. This is where it’s critical to have a dialog, not to pitch somebody.
Implementing relationship marketing within the sales process is very important. You have to create dialog, a natural dialog. Meaning dialogs should be genuine, not scripted. I promise the prospect you’re talking to can tell the difference. Switch your thinking from pitching to consulting. Everything you say should have their core needs and core pain in mind. You must make it a win for them, not yourself.
Mikes dad taught him “The most important number one goal as a salesperson is always help your customer win, and if your motivation is to help your customer win, you will always win in sales.”
Release on the outcome
Your motivation should always be to improve your client’s condition. Releasing on the outcome is the ultimate consultative sale. The point should always be, “Let’s get together, let’s see if we are a fit. And if not, that’s great.” You’re going to get value from the conversation, but there would not be a next step, and if you really believe that you can bring a great outcome.
It makes perfect sense. When the focus is on the outcome, your prospects or customers feel that. They feel, “Yeah, this guy is really trying to hit me up here and make this thing happen.” Versus completely release on the outcome, “Look, “I’m just here to see if we can work with each other. See if there’s a fit.” And if not, I can make some suggestions that could help you in the course of your business development.
In closing, taking the focus off of yourself and your own desires, and putting it on helping, serving and building business relationships with those you come in contact with, is the most natural course of action you could take as a salesperson. In doing this, you always win.
Take care,
Kody B.
p.s. Don’t miss ‘Outbound Conference’ where Mike Weinberg is speaking and be sure to pick up your copy of his 1st book ‘New Sales Simplified’ or learn more in the video above.
