In your quest to increase your sales, create new business and exceed your goals, there is one skill you simply must master. In all things, you must acknowledge that people naturally find refuge in relationships. To your sales career this means people are most likely to do business with people they know. To increase its impact, this concept can be further expanded to note that people are most likely to do business with people they like. If you are to succeed in sales you must develop the skills to create positive relationships with your prospects.



The importance of creating friendships in sales does not imply that you must be ingratiating, insincere or fawning. Certainly, these traits can be easily identified and would have the opposite effect of making your customers dislike you. If you want to be sure that you always leave your clients with a pleasant feeling about you it is necessary to be polite, gracious and kind. To create a relationship that allows your prospects to think of you as a friend, you must pay close attention to the impression you leave behind you.

Take the following example: Terry sells a high ticket item mostly through cold calling. In his cold calls, Terry reads from a script but likes to improvise in a few places. ?Are you familiar with who I am?? he begins in a loud and booming voice, as though he were just featured in Forbes magazine. The answer is usually voiced in a hesitant ?no? as the person on the other end of the phone wonders ?who is this guy??

Terry goes on to explain the high priced nature of his product ?I spend that on my credit card every month,? he fibs, causing his prospects to think of him as either a liar or a man in serious debt. ?If you can't move in my time frame, I'm just going to have to walk away from this whole deal. I have deadlines you know,? Terry tries a takeaway. He hopes the reverse psychology will cause his prospects to jump at his offer. Little does he know, his prospects usually can't wait to end the conversation.

?I have a 20,000 sq ft facility here,? he brags, as though he personally owns the building. ?We are so busy that it is filled with workers around the clock.? All in all, a conversation with Terry is an unpleasant ride down his fictional world. He is brash, loud and obnoxious and even without knowing him, it doesn't take much intuition for his prospects to start wondering if this guy is even telling the truth. Terry loses more sales than he gets because his prospects can't help but wonder how much worse things would be if they actually signed a deal with this guy.

Action step: Assess your sales presentations, are you at all obnoxious? As much as you want to get the sale, you will experience more success by being more amicable. Adjust your pitch if necessary.

With his brash and unpleasant demeanor, Terry was clearly trying to avoid approaching the prospect with his hat in his hand like a humble salesman. There were many ways Terry could have created the image of a successful, productive and competent business equal without becoming obnoxious. He could have pointed to his company's past success, alluding to how their product has helped other customers instead of focusing on himself, how great he was, how much he had accomplished and how successful he was. He could have been assertive without being obnoxious and, most importantly, he could have been impressive without being deceitful.

In a world filled with competition, you cannot afford to make enemies of your prospects. While it is not necessary for you to become anything other than yourself, you should make the effort to present yourself as a person your prospects can like. Without this basic relationship, you will find your sales endeavors much more difficult.