“Think about the customers that you consider the closest, the ones that you have the best relationships with, and write them down on a list.” – Jack Wilson in today’s Tip 1651
Do you make friends with your customers?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Jack Wilson. Here he is:
Jack Wilson: What’s going on, Daily Sales Tips? Jack Wilson back with another tip. And this time it’s been a little while, and I’m sorry for that, but I’m going to be more intentional about contributing even more to this great podcast and the Sales Success Society. What’s prompted my tip today was one of my big takeaways from the Sales Success Summit. And if you missed it this year, you really missed a great one because every year a theme tends to emerge. And this year’s theme, for me at least, was the humanity in sales.
Selling by being a human, connecting human to human, and what that all means. One of those speeches or presentations came from Leon Bowman with Dell. Leon asked us all to write down a list of our customers that we would consider friends. And it struck me because as I looked at that sheet of paper, I realized that in recent history, the answer was none.
So when I came back, I made an intentional effort to change that. And I think when we first hear that a lot of people’s immediate reactions is, Well, not all of my customers want to be my friends. There’s business over here, there’s personal life over here, and there’s a boundary. And sure, that can be true many of the time. And not everyone you meet is going to become fast friends or you don’t necessarily click with everyone.
So the point is not to make every one of your customers your friends, but I think the point is to at least open the door and avail yourself to friendships with the ones that might foster such a relationship. So how we can do this is very specific, and I think there are ways that we could open ourselves up to it more.
Personally, one of my character flaws is that although I love people and I genuinely seek to connect, I actually only keep a very small circle of folks really, really tight. So there’s different levels of friendship. I realized that if I want to change that, I have to make small incremental changes in how I open that door.
So my tip for you today is this. I want you to think about the customers that you consider the closest, the ones that you have the best relationships with, and write them down on a list. Now, which of those customers do you have a texting relationship with? If you’re like me, I don’t actually go right to text with a lot of customers. That’s a gated opportunity, if you will. I want you to take a handful now of people that are on a text relationship.
Now, pick one of those customers that you’re closest to and have a texting relationship with, and I want you to think about something that matters to them. It could be a child, it could be a hobby, an interest, something that they like, something that they shared with you. It could be an upcoming trip. What I want you to do right now after listening to this tip, I want you to text them just about that thing. Nothing to do with business, no intention whatsoever. I just want to send them a text. Maybe it’s a link to an article that you read. If you didn’t read one, maybe you Google it, put a little work into it.
What I want you to do is when you send that, I want you to be very specific. For example, I have someone that I work with closely that said I’m going to text a rep about their son and just say, Hey, how was your son’s project? Well, instead of saying your son, use their name. Be specific, be direct, be personal. And if you do this at least once, I think that you’ll find that it opens the door and crosses a threshold with that person and it signals to them, I’m open to more. I’m open to being friendly, not just business friends, if you will.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with my friend, Jack Wilson, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1651. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!