Why a better relationship doesn't generate a successful lead?

Relationship Counts Every time?
Why a better relationship doesn't generate a successful lead?
Yi-an Han
http://www.yianhan.com
Hello Sir!
It’s Not Just Relationship!

@yianh Relationship Counts Every time? 1
Have you ever had the experience that a better relationship causes negative impact to the result you want?

Have you ever evaluate how much effort you put on maintaining the interpersonal or business relationships?

Have you ever think of why some people could use less effort but get better result?

Do you think the closer the relationship you have with your customer, the higher chance you could win a deal?

Have you ever think of in which condition a relationship would work, or in which condition it wouldn’t work?

If you are not sureabout the answers of above questions, you should continue to read.

Basically we are always selling/persuading something to someone, either online or offline, during your work or on the FB.
What you were selling could be your company's product, your knowledge, or simply some ideas you want to share.
Almost everyone is a sales person nowadays.

A lot of sales persons believe relationship works for all.

If it were true, should it be the case thatthe closer relationship you have, the higher chance you could win a deal?
However, in reality, many examples show us a better relationship doesn't always get you what you want.
My friend John once said: “I had the experience to win a project over the competitor who had more than 20years friendship with the end user.”
So what is going on here?

Also, relationship building really costs time.
And we all have only 24 hours a day.
So why some people can be so successful in selling, while others don't?

Let's find out the secret formulahere.

In order to find out the answer of relationship building, I’ve been meeting with hundreds of people to try to find out that
in different scenarios, how do people make decisionsin their mind.
So let’s start with some of those real life examples to see how well the relationship works.

Example 1: If you want to buy an iPhone,
will you buy from ________
1. Someone who has closer relationshipwith you?
2. Or other people who doesn’t?
What’s yours choice? Take your time and think about it.

Example 2: If you want to decorate your house,
will you find the designer who is ________

Example 3: If you want to decorate your boss’s office,
will you find the designer who is ________

Example 4: How about your friend ask your referral to
introduce himto work at some department
in your company, will you ________
1. Refer him/her with your biggest endorsement
2. Or let the hiring manager make the decision

Does the relationship works in every situation?
In some cases, yes, but in other cases, not necessary.
There are situations where a better relationship actually hurts.
How does that happen and why?

In example 1, iPhoneis something tangible. You already could see the result at the time when you made the decision. You don’t foresee any risk.It can 100% meet all your requirements.
In other words, no uncertainty, and most of people usually don’t mind to do their friends a favor like this.
Relationship
Win rate
As a result, the better relationship you have, the higher chance you can get this deal.
If you were a sales person, under this situation, you should definitely put all efforts to build relationship, because your win rate is a proportional diagram as the right hand side.

Ruleno. 1:
If the thing you want to sell is foreseeable, and already meets the customer expectations in all aspects,
the closer relationship you have, the higher chance you can win a deal.
The right strategy is to develop a better relationship.

In example 2, it’s a little bit complex. Comparing to example 1, there are more concerns now, because you don’t know the result before you actually start the decoration.
The concerns such as:
If the final result can’t meet my expectation, will I argue with my friend?
I could change his design for once, how about 2nd,or3rdtimes? Will he be OK? Will it affect our friendship?
No one knows what will happen.

Although there are some uncertainties in example 2, you are still in control of the final decision.
However, in example 3, you don’t hold the right for the final decision and it’s not only about yourself, it’s about your company. So people now have more concerns such as:
Shall I still introduce my closest friend and help him to win this project? What if someone found out our relationship? Will it become an insider trading?
The uncertainty/risks is higher and higher. It’s not just you don’t foresee the result at the time while you made the decision, but you are having more and more concerns that could be from anywhere.

Relationship
Win rate
Does the relationship still work as below?
?
Well! It’s more like below now.
Relationship
Win rate
Less impact to win rate

Sometimes it can be even worse.
Relationship
Win rate
This indeed happens.
Sometime it’s simply because people treasure this friendship more than everything else, and don’t want to hurt it because of the potential risks or uncertainties.
Negative impact!

Why is that? And how to resolve it?
Let’s use below diagram to demonstrate this.
In general, when a person makes a decision, there are always a lot of factors, concerns, criteria, or requirements affecting the decision. Relationship is just one of them.
Final
Decision
Requirement 1
Concern 1
Concern 2
Relationship
Requirement 2

In example 1, the iPhonecase
Those factors in the grey area are already fulfilled. As a result, the remaining factors plays an important role affecting the user’s decision whom will he/she buy from.
Final
Decision
Requirement 1
Concern 1
Concern 2
Relationship
Requirement 2
Already fulfilled.

Result is uncertain
However, in example 2&3,
Those factors in the grey area remain uncertain. You are not sure how those factors can be addressed in the beginning. As a result, if you focused only on building relationship, the impact to the final decision is very limited.
Final
Decision
Requirement 1
Concern 1
Concern 2
Relationship
Requirement 2

Ruleno. 2:
If the things you want to sell is not foreseeable at this moment(ex: an integration project), the relationship is just one of the factors that could lead you to win, you also need to put your effort on digging out all other impacting factors and to address them well.
What decision will the end user make in a complicated situation?

So how to address those different factors?
Here comes a different skill sets of sales.
But if you can link those uncertainties to certaintiesin your customer’s mind, you will be success.
Certainty
Uncertainty
How?

So how to do it?

Actually, there is one thing you could do to make those uncertainties certainties, and you should do.
To let your customer believe in you.
Soinstead of putting effort on building relationships,you should focus on building "trust". This is the best way to address those uncertainties so that customer will buy-in your stories, your ideas, your concepts, your proposals, or whatever you said. It’s all about the “trust” and the “reliability” that you showed to the customers.

You should seriously look into how to build turst, reliability, and credibility.

Try to Ask yourself
•Do you really honor your promise?
•Did you always be on time when meeting with your clients?
•Does your email always have typos?
•Are you a consistent person?
•Could they rely on you that when you said this project can be completed successfully?
•Do you have the credit in your history while you were working with other companies?
•If your lies were caught, did you admit it or still deny it?
•Do you have enough competency for your product or your ideas?

“Trust” is the key to make uncertainty into certainty.
If customer trust you, they’ll
•believe in you
•know what you said can actually happen
If all uncertainties are cleared, basically you are making example 2&3become example 1. There your relationship will work as expected.

Final
Decision
Requirement 1
Concern 1
Concern 2
Relationship
Requirement 2
It’s trust
It’s trust
It’s trust
It’s trust
It’s trust
It’s trust that eliminates the uncertainties.

Certainty
Uncertainty
It’s trust
It’s trust that makes people believe in you.

It’s all about “trust”.
So where does “trust” come from?
It come from your reliabilityand credibility.

Here is how to build trust with your customers.
You can practice them everyday, trying to
speak from your heart
speak your feelings out
be consistent
be open and disclose more of yourself
gain professional knowledge

So here comes the Ruleno. 3:
The reliability and credibility is the ultimately key to win any deal for a sales person in an uncertainty situation.
You need to start to build this now.
Not next time, not tomorrow, but now.

Thank you!
For more information, please visit
http://www.yianhan.com
Continue to read:
How to develop your strategy in 3 steps
The right way to build customer values

Why a better relationship doesn't generate a successful lead?

More Related Content

Recently uploaded

Featured

Why a better relationship doesn't generate a successful lead?