The Power of Great Conversations
Regardless of the nature of your business, powerful, unseen laws influence the quality of your client relationships. More to the point, they determine success or failure. When abiding by these laws, your company enjoys the following benefits:
- Your networks rapidly grow
- Prospects become enthusiastic customers
- Clients view you as trusted partners, rather than expenses to be managed
- Others become eager to help you succeed
- In other words, when your sales professionals’ behaviors and strategies align with these laws, they will sell more effectively. They will create clients (and friends) for life.
In the book Power Relationships: 26 Irrefutable Laws for Building Extraordinary Relationships, authors Andrew Sobel and Jerry Panas offer insight into the critical components that comprise a meaningful connection, and how to keep them strong. Let’s explore one of the laws they define.
Power relationships are based on great conversations, not one person showing the other how much they know.
So…is it possible to focus too much on pitching, presenting, persuading, and impressing? Is it possible to overwhelm clients with analysis and reams of paper? Too often, the answer is: Yes!
Sobel and Panas suggest that you leverage this law by not categorizing client interactions as sales calls, credentials presentations, or operational updates. Instead, always prepare for meetings by asking this question: How can I create a great conversation?
Put differently, how do your conversations measure up? Do they help your clients and prospects:
- Recognize and better understand their challenges?
- Grasp the impact of important trends on their business or other circumstances?
- Recognize and better understand possible solutions to their problems?
- Engage and enlighten your prospects in ways different than your competitors?
- Create enthusiasm about working with you and your company?
- Lean toward you with a desire to learn still more?
By practicing this law, and restraining the urge to impress (i.e., talk), your sales team will promote great conversations and dramatically strengthen your relationships!
"It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much."
-Yogi Berra