How to Maintain A Happy Successful Client for Years

If you are selling the most coveted advertisers in your communities, local-direct businesses....what you will read below is paramount toward developing and maintaining a confidental, trustworthy and long-term client relationship:

Over the years experts have considered who the best sellers of their time were, according to bNET Sales & Marketing list: Steve Jobs, Ron Popeil, Benjamin Franklin, P. T. Barnum, Madonna, Ronald Reagan, W. Clement Stone, Empress Theodora, Joseph Smith, Jack LaLanne, Meg Whitman, George Clifford, Joe Girard, Aimee Semple McPherson. Some names may not be familiar but trust they had rendered incredible sales examples and stand as the best sellers of their time. I examined each and every part of their sales strategy and pulled some of their best excerpts to share.

1. Nothing sells faster than honest enthusiasm for your offering.

2. Knowing the client’s business is paramount as an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. Therefore, it’s important to research your customers before you sell to them.

3. It's not enough to sell; you've got to entertain the customer.

4. Don't sell the product; sell the vision.

5. Sell to the right customer and you can live off the repeat business

6. When approaching a prospective new or current client dressing professionally is  paramount  to success. Sometimes just looking good is enough to help consummate a sale as looking professional almost always is impressive as it demonstrates the professional sales representative is already successful.

7. Some salespeople offer as an excuse to why they are not closing deals, the effects of the current economy. In order to become the top gun in your field, you've got to keep selling, even when times get difficult.

8. Ronald Reagan's genial demeanor, crisp communication style, consistency of message, and commitment to deliver the goods are a true model of how to build a long term customer relationship. Selling isn't peddling; it's leading the way.

9. Many media sellers and client businesses depend on high or substantially good  ratings or lines of merchandise assortment as a reason to buy their station or from a retail environment when, if one is good enough at selling or helping a customer work their way through isles or merchandise or ready-to-wear on racks or coming up with a new and viable idea, product quality isn't an issue.

10. The last issue is probably the most important: Customer relationship management. If you don’t take good care of your customer/client they become somebody else’s customer/client. I find one of the biggest problems professional sellers have is good follow up…like calling the customer after they have bought a refrigerator, couch, new jacket or suit, asking if they are happy with their purchase and if there might be anything else one might do to make an invitation back into the store a breeding ground for another wonderful purchase experience. In media, System 21© has given birth to the Sales Service Agreement which serves as a menu of client objectives to accomplish throughout an annual media and branding or rebranding campaign, measurable every two months by the client with a face-to0face visit through a 1-5 grading system, wherein 5 represents “very satisfied and 1 represents the least satisfied.” Knowing where you stand with the client throughout the term of the campaign, expressed by satisfying stated and ongoing objectives to the mutual benefit of both client and professional sales representative is always the objective, the latter of which helps to insure a wonderful long-term relationship and a happy customer/client.  

Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.