Customers today are knowledgeable and sophisticated which means you have to work harder than ever to attract and keep them buying from you. This relies far more on your relationship-building skills rather than your selling skills. How do you capture their interest, their purchasing power, their loyalty?

By telling them your product or service is better than anyone else’s?

Even if this is true, it’s unlikely to be a sales clincher. Why not? Well, your product or service might not be what they want or need. You won’t know until you stop telling them about your marvellous product or service and begin to take an avid interest in what they might want or need.

By inundating them with information and bombarding them with daily phone calls and emails?

You’re not a stalker of prey – you’re not a hunter and this isn’t a jungle. It’s a relationship and a long-term one at that. Banish terms like ‘conquering’, ‘winning’, ‘losing’, ‘vanquishing’, or ‘dominating’ and think ‘mutually beneficial’ relationship.

By manipulating or tricking them into buying from you?

Not wise. They might be fooled once but hell hath no fury like a consumer wronged. Read the feedback forms and forums on the Internet, and you’ll know that companies no longer get away with shoddy service or products, broken promises, poor delivery, and a lack of after-sales care. Today’s disgruntled customer can simply log onto the Internet and leave a scathing report about their bad experience and it will be available online possibly forever to be read by anyone who might be considering buying the same product or service.

By radically slashing your prices?

While it’s true that customers are price-aware, they are not necessarily price-driven. Sure, your product or service might be the cheapest but does it deliver? Does it really solve their problem? What will you do next week when your competitors retaliate by going even lower? Can your business really afford to cut prices any further? How will you raise your prices in the future?

By preparing a one-size-fits-all list of benefits that will astound anyone who reads or hears them?

What motivates your customers to buy? Is there anything on your list of benefits that is relevant to them?

By dazzling them with statistics, clever PowerPoint presentations or a printed report? By talking at length about your product or service and providing a comprehensive demonstration?

This might work if the statistics are completely relevant to their problem, if the PowerPoint presentation is specifically about how your product or service will meet their actual needs or the report contains relevant information about how using your product or service will enhance their company… otherwise it’s probably going to seem like a big waste of their time and patience. Unfortunately, boring someone to death really doesn’t work as an effective sales strategy (although many have tried!).

By asking them tons of questions?

Only if you listen and respond to their replies. And only if the questions reveal that you have done your homework and understand their company and its needs.

By making big claims and huge promises about what your product or service can do?

It’s far better to under-promise and over-deliver, not the other way around – otherwise you’re setting both yourself and your customer up for future heartbreak.

By jumping in with clever responses whenever they offer an objection?

Selling can be a conversation in which you listen more than you speak – a conversation that leads to a sale today or sometime in the future.

By demanding they pay the way you want or else?

Make it easy for your customers to pay – offer them as many alternative payment methods as you can. Some people are still reluctant to pay over the Internet – so allow them to pay over the phone or by cheque. Make their lives easy.

By leaving them alone once they’ve bought from you?

Do this and you’re missing not only the opportunity to show them how much you really do care about the relationship (and naturally, their purchase and their on-going business with you) but also to ask for referrals and testimonials.

By deciding to focus on finding new customers and assuming your existing customers will be patient?

No one likes to feel they are being taken for granted. Customers today won’t accept it – there are companies all around the world vying for their business so there is no need to accept second-rate treatment. Ensure your business has the technology and staff to cope with providing the technical support, the requests for information, the after-sales care and customer service that all customers have come to expect.