One of my professors liked to say, “Business is people!” He often said it when he wanted to reduce student anxiety about jumping into the real world of professional work. The plain truth of that statement left an impression with me. Later in life I read the book, How to Make Friends and Influence People. Then, “Business is People!” became fundamental to my career.

Lose Yourself

When you really want to connect with a potential customer and form a good relationship, how do you steer the conversation to get their interest? What’s the best approach for getting someone to listen to your message?

You steer your attention away from yourself and listen carefully to understand their message. Then you can respond in a way that identifies with their thinking. This leads to dialog which leads to a relationship. As they find they can relate with you, they’ll become genuinely interested in hearing your message as it relates to them, including whatever it is you’re selling.

Marketing is All about Them

Your business prospect’s immediate interests probably have little to do with your product or service “solution.” They’re more likely to be thinking about their family, favorite hobby, or pressing business and personal issues. Marketing messages should align with real life experiences, both lived and hoped for.

Step into the shoes of your audience and better understand their needs, then demonstrate the value your business offers them.

Get to the Table!

To hit a home run, you must first get up to bat. A salesperson’s job is to reach out to potential new customers proactively. A marketer’s job is to create awareness and desire for a brand. The best way to accomplish both is to create an attraction in the market, not push a product or service with a lot of hype.

There is a time and place for spirited selling, answering objections and hard-nosed negotiation, but you’ll probably be absent from that table if you haven’t first developed an authentic relationship with your prospective customer. This relationship begins first in the mind of customers as they relate to your consistent messaging that speaks to their interests. It is further developed by what customers actually experience when doing business with your company.

Resist the Urge for Urgency!

Perhaps there’s some urgency indicated by your revenue projections. Maybe you really need to hit a financial target and think you should bust out and use more aggressive selling tactics. Go ahead and try. You might force a few sales through the pipeline. But what if your competition has already made friends with your best prospects by talking with them about what really matters – their personal interests and business goals?

Small Talk and Bigger Deals

People love to share their interests with those who are genuinely interested. Moms and dads do this. Decision-makers who are moms and dads and grandparents and aunts and uncles do this. And you do this. Wouldn’t it then make sense to connect on a more personal, emotional level in your messages and conversations?

Advertising should tap into personal emotions to generate recall and awareness. In sales and business development, patient relationship-building cultivates valuable friendships in your professional life which helps your business thrive!

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Learn a valuable sales lesson during the pandemic outbreak. Get to know every client or customer on a personal level. It’s amazing what opportunities you may find for new business. And there’s the rub. “New business” is not synonymous with “new customer.” I was taught this by business owners pretty early in my selling career but I’ll admit not learning it very well until I became a business owner.

“Some Web Guy”

A couple of our clients paused services or cut marketing costs at the early stage of the business shutdown. Thankfully, some new projects have rolled in and business has remained steady thanks primarily to current clients expanding their needs. In particular, I got to know one of them for the first time on a personal level, Chief to Chief.

As if by accident, this longtime client, after years of delegating his firm’s marketing to a manager, found out what we really do. In his mind “Chuck Sink Link” was a cost of doing business – just “some web guy” or “someone who hosts our website.” This client (the CEO, not the manager point-of-contact) got on the phone with me after a potential dispute and suddenly the relationship has taken off, and so has new business for both of us!

We finally know each other, and much better!

The client mentioned is a leading netting manufacturer in Connecticut who almost had to furlough many of his employees indefinitely because of a tremendous impact on two of their top markets – Amusements and Construction. He and his engineers turned on a dime to start producing protective masks while netting work is slow. Their employees, already skilled in various stitching techniques, made tens of thousands of critically needed masks.

Through our very first live conversation, the client discovered that we do scalable eCommerce websites, digital advertising and social media marketing. He then treated us like a business partner instead of “the web guy” and we’ve since built an eCommerce website together that generated about $50,000 in mask sales the first two days, resulting in hundreds of donated masks to organizations in need like homeless shelters, hospitals, first responders and nursing homes. The valued employees are at work, earning paychecks and their netting business is again having an upsurge in sales.

The Deeper Conversations

I’ve had deep discussions with several other clients during this apparent “reset” in the economy and our mutual support has been fortified. Together we are keeping busier than ever while being deeply concerned about the companies we know of that need to make difficult decisions. The wisdom and compassion we have shared with each other are among the intangible values I can’t put a price on and wouldn’t do without.

Hopefully, we’ll remember the really important aspects of work relationships as so many of us are forced physically apart for a while longer. It’s a great time for discovering who your suppliers and customers really are and how you can help make each other better at what you both do.

The post When is it okay to get personal in business? appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.