Six tips to improve your sales by using partnering skills
Selling is evolving and we are in a time when it is more collaborative and customer focused than ever before. Here are some ways to develop a more modern approach.
- Develop trust, do what you say you are going to do know your stuff, and have people feel safe in the information that they are sharing with you. Above all, though, do these things in a way which is genuinely intended to help other people, rather than purely yourself.
- Use a win-win orientation. Think about how you solve problems or deal with conflict, there are two sides to every story are you focusing only on your own objectives, or are you focused in on someone else’s objectives. Depending on the balance. This will be how you deal with problem solving. Maybe you only care about yourself. This will mean that you could be quite forceful. Maybe you are only really care about the other person achieving their objectives. In this case, you are probably quite accommodating. Any kind of either question Why are you trying to solve this problem. The more you can compromise them we can negotiate. The more that you can balance, the way in which you look at both sides to any given situation will be more effective
3 Become comfortable with interdependence. This is all about control of some state to be truly independent, you will have to give control over certain things to other people. Do not worry about this, as I see this as a strength, that you are able to do that. And that, to use the old adage of ‘many hands make light work’, more could be achieved by other people working towards a shared goal
4 Increase levels of self-disclosure and feedback. Tell your customer what need to make the relationship work whilst encouraging them to share about their needs and expectations. Be prepared to give and accept information about what is working and not working
5 Embrace change. One way to do this is to understand change curves. With any change we all go through very similar, thinking and feeling. Whether we are starting in denial, whether we are becoming angry or frustrated with this, whether we are moving more towards acceptance, or whether we actually see changes are positive, and something that we can embrace. Everybody goes through these stages at different speeds, think about where you might be on the change curve. But equally think about where somebody else might be where your customer might be, if you can identify this, then the things that you say and do can be, to help them in their own journey to deal with change.
6. Look to the future. Think about how you make decisions. Do you tend to look at the past things have happened before? We do tend to look more towards the future and saying what has happened in the past is useful, but equally. They should not be at the expense of looking towards what might happen in times ahead. So use ways of giving yourself a future orientation, such as looking at trends the thing might develop thinking about what your goals are and your partner’s You are the party’s goals our customers goals, look at things,
7. A bonus one! We tend like sevens, so why not have seven tips? Use the Sales PQ self-audit on the Selling Through Partnering Skills book website to understand how you score in each of the six elements of sales PQ. Think about how you can improve your score (and mindset to sell) considering questions you will be asked with the report that comes with this. (It’s FREE to do the test)
These tips are based on using Partnering Intelligence or PQ – six elements that make up a way of working that results in an environment conducive to building trust and creating mutual beneficial relationships. These are explored from a salespersons perspective in the book ‘Selling Through Partnering Skills – A modern approach to winning business‘ by Fred Copestake
Fred Copestake is founder of Brindis, a sales training consultancy. Over the last 22 years he has travelled round the world 14 times visiting 36 countries to work with over 10,000 salespeople. His book ‘Selling Through Partnering Skills’ looks at the evolving world of sales and sets out what salespeople need to do to refine their approach. It explores how to take things to the next level through understanding partnering intelligence and using the innovative VALUE Framework.
Contact: https://linktr.ee/fredcopestake
Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash