Recently a fellow recruiter reached out to me and asked what he could do to boost his sales. He explained that things have been slow and he hasn't been bringing on new clients at the rate his employers want him too. Immediately I thought to myself, "If you're building quality relationships, your sales should always increase." Here are some differences between selling and building relationships.
Selling By The Numbers
With this approach, you don't really have to have much skill - just know your numbers and crank out calls and emails until you beat your competition by pure volume of outreach. Your massive outreach efforts will generate some interested prospects and some of those prospects will turn into clients. You can gain good clients this way, but it's the hardest and most painful way to sell.
Massive Outreach
In order to keep your numbers up every month, your outreach activity has to be massive. You will start to sacrifice quality in all aspects of your approach - from quality of prospects to quality of outreach. Your prospect list gets diluted and your messaging becomes standard and impersonal. You compete with 100 others who are doing the same thing and sound exactly the same. You will also face a massive amount of rejection.
Gaining a New Client
You have now gained a few interested prospects who are willing to give you a shot - so you engage in business right away. Clients gained with this approach typically don't give you the respect you deserve. They expect you to deliver amazing results with little to no information on what they actually need or or want. Because they are taking a chance on you, they want you to perform a miracle, but they expect a disaster. It's not the best way to start a business relationship.
Hitting Slumps
Contrary to popular belief, when you are building a sales pipeline with a massive amount of contacts, you will hit slumps. As mentioned before, massive outreach can lead to low quality messaging. This can then lead to low response rates, which inevitably leads to slumps in new client acquisition. You can flip a coin 100 times exactly the same way and land on heads 75% of the time. Your slump will naturally correct itself, just like flipping a coin - but the slumps will always happen.
Building Quality Relationships
When you focus on building quality, long lasting relationships, you rarely have sales slumps - your sales should always increase. Building relationships takes time and it is definitely a slower and more thoughtful approach, so don't expect to be crushing your sales goals in the first month.
Focused Outreach
Instead of reaching out to everyone and building massive lists, focus on a select few prospects and figure out how to differentiate yourself. Spend time learning about your prospects and developing outreach messaging that is meaningful and valuable to them. Remember, your prospects are hearing from 100's of other people just like you who offer the same product and they are approaching it in the same exact way. Be creative, be different and you will stand out.
Gaining a New Client
Once you have an interested prospect, make sure to focus on the relationship not the business. Try and set up a meeting immediately - grab coffee, lunch or do something that will allow you to get to know your prospect. I actually refrain from doing business with people until I have developed some sort of relationship with them. If you do this, your clients will treat you with respect and they will try and help you succeed.
Successful Relationships
When you focus on building relationships, your clients are more likely to want you to succeed. Three quality clients will give you more business than ten clients who barely know you. When you have solid business relationships, sales come easily. You will never have to stress and struggle with a massive outreach plan to hit your sales quota every month.
Remember, massive outreach can lead to bad prospecting, average messaging and low quality clients. Building relationships takes more time but allows you to make more sales with quality clients. Stand out from the rest by focusing on relationships and the sales will fall into place.
This article was written by Quintin Ford, a recruitment entrepreneur located in Playa Vista, CA. Quintin is the Founder of OCEAN | STREET and avid blogger and social media guru. Learn more about Quintin on LinkedIn.
