Join Matthew Whyatt this week with the latest episode of Velocity Selling TV as he discusses how to build a great sales relationship over the phone.
Try Velocity Selling for Free
Register Now
Velocity Selling TV Episode 59: Building a Relationship
Hi Matthew Whyatt here with Velocity Selling TV. It’s just me today because it’s Easter time and Bob is, as everybody here knows, is in Canada and I think he’s tapping a Maple tree for maple syrup, that’s actually true. So that’s not a cliché, Canadians actually do that sort of stuff.
What we’re going to be talking about today is relationships. And I just want you to think about the relationships you currently have in your life. Whether it be business or personal. Have a think about them. How did they actually start? They probably started with you being interested in that person. And how do you be interesting? By asking questions and genuinely listening.
Now we’ve spoken about this in a previous episode but I want to remind you of that. How does that relate to a sales situation and how do you go ahead and start that sales conversation?
There’s a couple of key points and key elements I want to teach you today that will help you get in that door. The first thing I want you to remember is – whether you’re selling business to business products, or business to consumer products, you’re actually dealing with human beings. What we like to say is we’re dealing H to H- human to human.
Of course, most of the time you’ll be building on relationships and working with those people. So how do we do that?
What I would like to share with you is how a lot of my clients open the door to start building that relationship through the telephone. A lot of the times salespeople will make a cold call with very little research, with very little effort actually being put in to that initial effort. It’s about a smile and dial approach. That might have worked, 20, 30 , 50 years ago, but it just doesn’t work anymore. You really need to understand just a bit about the person, you have to understand a little bit about the business.
So when you first pick up the phone to make that conversation, to make that call, know something. One of the best scripts that I’ve used and that I teach people to use is to first of all, know what you’re going to say, that’s a script of course and then discuss what is actually important to that person’s business. Now there’s a whole range of strategies that you can get into and talk about there, but let me just talk about one idea.
I’ll open the conversation along the lines of: Hi it’s Matthew with Velocity Selling. Hey, I noticed you did this. Or, I can see you are currently doing these things, or I read on your blog, you’ve got that. And we currently are helping an existing customer. Now that customer might be someone in their industry and it might even be a competitor. So we’re currently helping XYZ company with their sales training or we’re currently helping them with their accounting and we show them how they can actually raise their productivity by 25%.
So think about the structure I just used. I introduced myself, let them know that we are calling in relation to how we’ve helped others and how we might be able to help them as well. Of course if you can give them a little bit of detail around what you have done for the other people, much better.
And then, we want to respect their time. Have you got a moment to speak about that? So usually I found just having the person understanding your currently working in their industry, and understanding that you’re happy to share with them some other ways that other people are getting the advantage, has put you in a really good position.
The next part, once you’ve started to ask questions, I wanted to walk you through the process of actually getting invited to their office. Now, often salespeople will say, can I come in and talk to you or coffee, or can I show up at your door, sort of stuff. Now let me just change one or two words here, it’s going to give you a lot better ROTI – return on time invested with that call.
And that is using the invite. After you’ve had a conversation, and I’ll break that conversation down for you in the coming episodes, but I just want to talk about the overall strategy of getting that appointment, getting in the door. So, I would say something along the lines of – once you identify one or two issues that is an issue for them, you say: Do you ever invite people to your office to discuss issues like this?
Most of the time they’re going to say, Well actually, yes. I say, when would you like to invite me? Just by changing that invite part to hey can I grab a bit of your time, can I buy you a coffee, or whatever you’re starter is, that person goes from resistance to accepting.
Let’s say they invite you into the business.
I know I’ve gone on a little bit long on this episode. I just wanted to talk about that relationship stuff. I wanted to talk about the fact that we’re dealing with human to human, respecting their time, and giving them a bit of value in that first conversation.
Well guys, thanks very much for your time. I look forward to talking to you next week. Bye for now.
Matthew has been involved in the growth of many businesses across multiple industries including, health products, software development, IT consultancy, Real Estate and franchise sales with personal sales of over $100 million.
After all of this hard work Matthew took a year off with his wife and two children in Bali. After returning to Australia Matthew was ready to take on his next challenge, following his passion in Sales, and joined the Velocity Selling team as CEO.
