• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Softer Side of Selling

Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling

  • Home
  • About the Book
  • Sales Training
  • About Don
  • About Lois
  • Join Our Sales Club
  • Contact Us

Creating Good Customers For Life

07/18/2019 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

How does the future look for growing your sales volume? Are you chasing the best value customers? Do you look for the “easy win” and move on? Or do you create customers for life?

Being intentional in seeking good customers will create customers for life

Great Salespeople Create Customers For Life Image by Dean Norris from Pixabay

Grow Sales Volume Intentionally

Great salespeople look for new customers having characteristics similar to their best customers. The goal is to develop mutually beneficial long-term relationships and create customers for life. Even if you are in a “one call close” business, the best prospects have needs and resources to meet the needs similar to your best customers. And, in my experience, there are very few “one-and-done” transactions for professional salespeople. Customers may make large purchases like homes and cars infrequently but they will buy again. In the meantime they have friends, family and colleagues who can be referred to the great salespeople.

First Define Your Best Value Customer

Begin with the end in mind. Good advice whatever you are planning. For the professional salesperson looking to grow their sales volume, knowing which prospects can become customers for life is critical. In another post we discussed how to define your best customers. When you look at them, they all have similar characteristics like size, business model, industry, location, product life cycle, etc. You may have different defining characteristics for the A list customers if you sell into different markets. Great salespeople know that prospecting with companies with characteristics similar to their best customers is the most efficient way to create new customers for life.

Second Prepare The Value Added Proposition

Great salespeople have built mutually beneficial long-term relationships with their best customers by adding value to the customers business. They do it by providing products and services making their customers more efficient and more profitable. Think about which problems you solve for your best customers. Create stories of how those companies have benefitted from doing business with you. Begin creating new customers for life by meeting with prospects who have similar problems to your A list. Great salespeople then qualify the buyers offering a value added proposition and listening to the buyer’s response.

Third Build A Strong Relationship

Buyers who come to trust and respect you will ultimately become customers for life. Great salespeople build relationships one interaction at a time. Trust and respect are built on honesty and keeping the best interest of the customer in mind. When I sold for a metal fabricator, customers offered me work we could certainly do. But sometimes the customer would be better served by using one of our competitors. When that happened I recommended the customer use a competitor. But when the customer needed something very unique, was on a tight schedule, or demanded very high quality, we would be awarded the work. Great salespeople know their customer’s business well enough to be a valuable resource.

What You Can Do Right Now

  • List the characteristic defining your best customers for life
  • Select prospects with similar characteristics
  • Write compelling value proposition to solve problems common to your target market
  • Meet with potential customers and begin building mutually beneficial long-term relationships

To learn more sales secrets see Chapter Twenty-Two, Customer Management, in Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling. For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford & Lois Carter Crawford

 

Filed Under: Sales Tips Tagged With: B2BSales, Salesperson, Salesprocess, Salesprospecting, Salestools, Selling, Smallbusinesssales

Previous Post: « The Salesperson’s Decision Maker Dilemma
Next Post: Great Salespeople Push Distractions From Selling Aside »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Available on Amazon

BE THE TOP DOG—THE BIG KAHUNA—THE LEADER OF THE PACK!

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. Want to do better? Learn how to be the top dog. Order your copy of Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling now!

And sign up below for our free Sales Club, where each week you will get tips on how to increase your sales and become the top dog.

Join the sales club—it’s free!

* indicates required

Recently on Secrets of the Softer Side

  • Sales Skill: Achieving Goals
  • Sales Skill: Cold Calling
  • Sales Skill: Laser Focus on Selling Activities
  • B2B Selling: Then and Now
  • Sales Skill: Choose The Right Word

DISCLOSURES / DISCLAIMERS

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Please read our Full Disclosure .

All Rights Reserved

Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling and Softer Side of Selling are Marketing Idea Shop brands. All content and graphics ©2018-2021 Marketing Idea Shop, LLC.

Footer

ADDRESS

Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling
is a book and a brand of:

MARKETING IDEA SHOP, LLC
Harrisonburg, VA | USA 22802
540.820.3840

Marketing Idea Shop
With our help, you can challenge yourself to close more sales, earn more revenue & drive your competitors crazy.

Recipe Idea Shop
A Healthy Twist on Comfort Food Recipes

Copyright © 2021 · All Content and Graphics Are Property of Marketing Idea Shop, LLC.