Small Business Blog from Atlantic Canada

I am "CA" Atreya (PMP, MBA), the author of this blog. I help businesses in Atlantic Canada achieve their BHAG successfully. You may subscribe to this blog using a feed reader (RSS).

I started my professional career as a sales person in 1995. I used to sell Reuters Information Services to financial institutions. For the uninitiated, information services like Reuters and Bloomberg is the life-line for stock brokers, foreign exchange dealers, mutual fund dealers – in fact anyone who trades financial instruments for a living. There was precious little information on stocks, bonds, forex, indexes, etc. available on the Internet in those days. So here I was, selling this great product to the financial community. Piece of cake, I thought. I should be able to achieve my targets and more. I was dreaming of fat commission cheques. In fact, I thought the product would practically sell itself. All I needed to do was to go get the orders. Right? Wrong! Here I learnt my first lesson in business. Relationships!

Products never sell themselves. Relationships sell products. Relationships sell services. You may have the best product, but if you have not built a relationship with the prospect, he/she is not going to buy from you. While the product attributes are important, people buy from you because they trust you. They trust you to provide a solution for their needs. And relationships are built on trust. But being fresh out of college with no experience, I focused on how great the product was and how they will benefit from it. My sales script focused on three things – product, product & product.

Not one sale in two months. I was getting frustrated. Those commission cheques were evaporating into thin air. I got my first order more out of pure chance – being at the right place at the right time. After the sale, instead of moving on with my prospect list, I decided to ensure this customer had no complaints. Heck, I wasn’t doing any better selling. This way, I figured, I would at least get to know why they bought from me and I could use it for future sales calls. I was there for the installation and training. I practically lived in their office for the next two weeks. It was one of the best investments I ever made. Not only did I get to see traders in action, I was also able to see how they used our product. Additionally, I began to understand their terminology and began the talk their lingo.

Once it was clear the system were up and running smoothly, all I had to do was to request the CEO and a few traders for some references – subject to the condition that they were happy with my product and services rendered. I stopped using my prospect list. No more cold calling. My customers were selling the product for me. They not only gave me names and contacts, but also called them and convinced them to purchase the Reuters information service from me. In most cases, all I did was to walk into a prospects office, fill out the order form, pick up the cheque and walk out. If anyone had told me before this experience about the importance of building relationships with clients, I would have laughed it off. But not anymore.

When I quit two years later, all my clients were sorry to see me go. Here are some of the lessons I learnt from that experience:

1. My customers are my network. They are the source of my leads and very high quality leads at that.

2. While I am no longer in that industry, I am touch with some of them even today. We do not have a buyer-seller relationship now. But one has not seen the future. By keeping in touch today, I am nurturing that relationship. We rarely meet the right people when needed. But communicating often means I am on top of their minds. I prefer a phone call though emails can be a more cost-efficient way to keep in touch.

3. When my customers are happy, they will use their network to help me. Word of mouth referral is still the most effective marketing tool. So make sure they are happy.

4. Give back something of value to your customers. It does not have to be monetary. Offer something the customer value at no charge (if it is reasonable). For example, I set up a spreadsheet which grabbed data from the Reuters screen for their internal use. Since most traders did not know how to use Excel, they were pretty happy about this value add.

While this is true for any business, the success of your small business depends on the relationships you cultivate with your clients and how you nurture them.