Connection and Relationship Building Lead to Sales

connection-and-relationship-building-lead-to-sales
Selling is hard. Okay, maybe not hard, but it is difficult, especially if you are missing certain steps in the selling process.

I know many of you probably think that since I worked for TrainerTainment and ran a million dollar a year party program that I am a sales person. Well, yes I can sell, but it is not a strong skillset. Being a party manager meant I had an amazing team with the skills to sell. I was there to help, guide, and train them on what they needed to do to be successful.

Last year I decided to have a home-based business selling  jewelry from Stella & Dot. It is a multi-level marketing company selling amazing jewelry. I did it for a few reasons. One, I wanted to pay for my travels around the world and two, I wanted to see if I could sell or not.  I want to share with you what I have learned this past year.

The biggest thing I have learned about selling is that connection may be its most important part. I know, the close is really important, too, but if you don’t connect, you will never get to the close.

Being halfway across the world, I have to do 100% of my selling online, which has not been an easy task. Connecting online is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Sure, it’s easy to get people to like photos and comment on what they love, but true connection is building a relationship and building that relationship takes a real conversation.

When I was home last summer I was able to sell in person. I couldn’t believe how much easier it was when I was standing face-to-face with the client. I wasn’t talking about our product, but talking about them –  their family and who they are. I could develop a sense of what they like and then connect them with a particular product. The difference between online and in-person selling was amazing. I sold more!

Selling online has shown me that yes, you use social media to make connections with people, but once you have made that connection you need to deepen it and turn it into a relationship. I know from experience that many sales people in centers are trying to connect, build relationships, and sell by sitting in the center using social media or just making phone calls. They don’t spend time out of the center every day going business to business. You have to go out, make a connection, and build a relationship. If you want to expand your business and take your sales to the next level, get out of the center on a daily basis and connecting with people, face to face.

I challenge you. Spend at least an hour outside the center every day. Start small, visiting five new businesses a day. Go to a shopping center. You’ll easily get five. Build on that five and shoot for ten after a few weeks. I promise when your connections grow, your number of events will grow!

How do you build your burger?

We recently had our quarterly planning session. What that means is at the end of every quarter our leadership team gets together to reflect on the past quarter, plan and goal set for the next quarter and take a look at our values, people, three year and ten-year goals. This quarterly planning helps us get and stay on track to be successful.

During our meeting we were talking about our products and services and asking ourselves does it benefit our customers to change our minimum base service to fit them. While we do customize everything to meet each of our client’s needs, I mean, do we go with what we know works – like allowing a client not to commit to sales coaching for the time that it takes to be successful. Then Mary, who always brings amazing wisdom to our team, speaks up and says “It’s like do you want a burger with mustard, mayo, and cheese or do you want it with just meat and ketchup?” I know, making you hungry right? Well, it made me hungry to think about it as we need to stick to our base packages and then have a list of add-on services available for customers to customize to best fit their wants and needs.

Centers should also create their birthday, group and field trip packages this same way. When clients sign up for sales coaching, mystery shopper or grand opening projects, we work with them to create packages that do just that. We create three base packages and then create a list of add on’s. So the first is just a basic package, think of this as just a burger and fries. The next package is a step up to a burger, fries and soda. The final package would be the ultimate package that includes everything, burger, fries, soda, and ice cream. They still have the ability to customize it with all the toppings they want, and that is how parties should be too.

This structure makes it easy for you, your party hosts, but most of all the parents. I have three boys, so I have booked my fair share of parties and have reviewed hundreds of centers birthday party packages, and nothing makes me more confused, and quite frankly irritated, than having a TON of packages. Yes, there are some with 8 or more packages, and I had already tuned out by the time I got to the 5th.

I encourage to you to take a look at your packages, even call and shop your center and see how long the phone call takes to book a party. Here’s a tip – if you follow the birthday BDSQF we train on a call from hello to booked is on average eight minutes. If doing it yourself isn’t for you then we are here to help.

Have a great week and we hope you have a big weekend of birthday sales planned!

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