A short Brian Tracy talk (YouTube video transcript) explaining how salespeople should position themselves as partners, not mere vendors. Key tactics: help customers sell to their customers, assist in ways beyond your product, use the law of reciprocity, and demonstrate genuine personal interest to build long-term, repeat business.
You already know that there's a lot of competition in the marketplace. So how do you position yourself in the heart and mind of your customer in such a way that he or she prefers to buy from you over and over again rather than from someone else? And the answer is, you partner for profit. Instead of seeing yourself as a vendor selling a product and leaving, see yourself as a partner. See yourself as a person who works with or works for the other company and is constantly looking for ways to help your customer in ways that sometimes are far beyond what a normal salesperson would do. You know that if you're selling to a company, the person who runs the company thinks about getting customers all day long. And so anything that you can do to help them get more customers is going to cause you to be seen as a partner rather than as a salesperson. One of the rules is to help the customer sell to their customer. Sell to the customer's customer. Show how everything that you offer helps the customer to be more effective in selling more of his products and services to his own customers. You actually are there to help that customer build their business and build their profitability. Now, there's a rule in business and in life called the law of reciprocity, which says that if you do something nice for someone else, they will want to do something nice for you. It's called the law of payback. If somebody does something nice for us, helps us in some way, by gum, we want to pay them back. So look for ways to help your customers in ways that might not be related to your product or service. Sometimes sending a book or an article on soccer because the customer's son or daughter plays soccer is a small thing. It has nothing to do with business. But it shows that you're thinking about the customer more than just as a person who purchases. You're thinking about them as a friend and as a partner. Tell your customers that you see yourself more their partner than as a salesperson. And you're constantly looking for ways to help them to achieve their goals in a cost effective way, exactly as if you owned a part of the business. When they start to see you as a partner rather than as a salesperson, you will differentiate yourself from your competition and they will see you as a much more valuable person to buy from than anyone else. Sa.
Have a better day.
