ionship, even if you have the best valued product offering, you may never get an opportunity to present your case. Every salesperson understands how hard it is to get an audience with a customer who is in immediate need of your product. In the heat of a large product purchase, buyers become scarce and hard to reach. When you look at it from the buyers side, this scarcity is understandable as the rate ofThere are only two types of selling; low price selling and relationship selling. The former is based on having the lowest priced product on the market and the latter is based on building a relationship with your prospects and customers in order to better positioning yourself, your product and your company to allow other criterion besides just price to play a part in the customer’s selection process.The problem with low priced selling is that there isn’t a product made that somehow couldn’t be made cheaper by someone else. As a result, low priced selling yields such thin margins, that as a business model, it’s a risky strategy at best. It’s also a lazy way to try and build a sales career.These days, large companies have sophisticated purchasing departments that are trained to “commoditize” products.

Their training has led them to believe that it’s to their advantage to use the leverage of a bidding situation where everyone is competing against each other for their business. In doing so, they promote an environment of price discounting as their main selection criterion. If you as a salesperson follow lock-step-in-line and play along, even if you win their business, you will lose. If low priced selling is a lazy way to build a sales career, it’s also a lazy way for purchasing agents to buy products. But that’s their problem. You’re problem as a salesperson is to find ways to create value for your customers in order to justify a fair price so that both you AND your firm can make enough profit to sustain long-term survival. That’s where relationship selling comes in.

Without an existing relationship, even if you have the best valued product offering, you may never get an opportunity to present your case. Every salesperson understands how hard it is to get an audience with a customer who is in immediate need of your product. In the heat of a large product purchase, buyers become scarce and hard to reach. When you look at it from the buyers side, this scarcity is understandable as the rate of

problem with low priced selling is that there isn’t a product made that somehow couldn’t be made cheaper by someone else. As a result, low priced selling yields such thin margins, that as a business model, it’s a risky strategy at best. It’s also a lazy way to try and build a sales career.These days, large companies have sophisticated purchasing departments that are trained to “commoditize” products.

Their training has led them to believe that it’s to their advantage to use the leverage of a bidding situation where everyone is competing against each other for their business. In doing so, they promote an environment of price discounting as their main selection criterion. If you as a salesperson follow lock-step-in-line and play along, even if you win their business, you will lose. If low priced selling is a lazy way to build a sales career, it’s also a lazy way for purchasing agents to buy products. But that’s their problem. You’re problem as a salesperson is to find ways to create value for your customers in order to justify a fair price so that both you AND your firm can make enough profit to sustain long-term survival. That’s where relationship selling comes in.

Without an existing relationship, even if you have the best valued product offering, you may never get an opportunity to present your case. Every salesperson understands how hard it is to get an audience with a customer who is in immediate need of your product. In the heat of a large product purchase, buyers become scarce and hard to reach. When you look at it from the buyers side, this scarcity is understandable as the rate of

Their training has led them to believe that it’s to their advantage to use the leverage of a bidding situation where everyone is competing against each other for their business. In doing so, they promote an environment of price discounting as their main selection criterion. If you as a salesperson follow lock-step-in-line and play along, even if you win their business, you will lose. If low priced selling is a lazy way to build a sales career, it’s also a lazy way for purchasing agents to buy products. But that’s their problem. You’re problem as a salesperson is to find ways to create value for your customers in order to justify a fair price so that both you AND your firm can make enough profit to sustain long-term survival. That’s where relationship selling comes in.

Without an existing relationship, even if you have the best valued product offering, you may never get an opportunity to present your case. Every salesperson understands how hard it is to get an audience with a customer who is in immediate need of your product. In the heat of a large product purchase, buyers become scarce and hard to reach. When you look at it from the buyers side, this scarcity is understandable as the rate of

lling is a lazy way to build a sales career, it’s also a lazy way for purchasing agents to buy products. But that’s their problem. You’re problem as a salesperson is to find ways to create value for your customers in order to justify a fair price so that both you AND your firm can make enough profit to sustain long-term survival. That’s where relationship selling comes in.

Without an existing relationship, even if you have the best valued product offering, you may never get an opportunity to present your case. Every salesperson understands how hard it is to get an audience with a customer who is in immediate need of your product. In the heat of a large product purchase, buyers become scarce and hard to reach. When you look at it from the buyers side, this scarcity is understandable as the rate of

ionship, even if you have the best valued product offering, you may never get an opportunity to present your case. Every salesperson understands how hard it is to get an audience with a customer who is in immediate need of your product. In the heat of a large product purchase, buyers become scarce and hard to reach. When you look at it from the buyers side, this scarcity is understandable as the rate of the incoming call bombard increases exponentially the closer they get to a large dollar purchase. Afterall, the people involved in the purchasing decision have other responsibilities to tend to and they tend to view salespeople as an intrusion into their work day. So what’s a salesperson supposed to do? Well, the answer is to build the relationship ahead of time. If you think about situations where you already had a great existing relationship with a buyer, you’ll realize that those buyers don’t put up the traditional walls that you’ll find in other situations where there is no existing relationship.Relationship selling won’t guarentee that you will always win the business, but it does guarentee that you will at least get a chance to position your product as the front runner.

Once you have built a trusting relationship with your customer, don’t impune the relationship by assuming you will automatically win all of his business just because you buy him a few lunches from time to time. Relationship selling is about bringing value to your customer in many forms. Primarily you should strive to understand his business to the point that you can provide real business solutions for him. He has given you the opportunity to get to know him. Take advantage of the situation and get to work. Create value, create business solutions. Make his job easier, help him to somehow do his job better and make him look good to his boss for having selected you as his business partner. I promise you, that is not something that the low priced vendor is going to be able to doing because he’s off trying to find his next dea