Integrate Your Customers into an Exclusive Club

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Create a customer-only club to solidify and enhance your reputation as expert in your field. Doing this not only builds your image, but will also generate a steady stream of future referrals and other business opportunities.

A Customer-only Club Is Your Greatest Source of Support

If you create a community of people who have brought from you in the past, there are a lot of things you can do:

Run customer appreciation events

Provide incentives for refeffals

Deliver exceptional after-sales and suppout

Host luncheons where customers have the opportunity to network with each other

Let people collaborate to solve problems

Provide information about new products under development

Share useful information

Introduce people or organizations that sell complementaty products or services

Overall, having availble an excstmer-only club further strengthens the perception that you’re not just a salesperson but an important resource. Over a people will come to trust you more and more. They will have no hesitation in recommeding you to their friends because they will see you as a high-value consultant.

This is all part and parcel of being perceived as a persuader rather than a manipulator. Traditional sales techniques are only needed when someone does not want to buy. When you’re entering into an arrangement that will be mutually beneficial. If you’re viewed as a trusted consultant with considerable expertise in your field, then people will naturally choose to do business with you. Every part of your system is designed to finetune your persuasive eather than your manipulative skill sets.

Honesty and Integrity Is the Best Policy

If you’re honest and have integrty:

you’ll always set realistic expectations: rather than making vague promises you know full well you cannot keep. Rook salespeople promise whatever the client wants to hear to make the sale first and worry about the consequences later. Experts do just the opposite. They say “No” right up front to what they can’t deliver and then work hard to exceed expectations.

You’ll break bad news to customers immediately: rather than waiting to see if it gets lost in the crush. Experts accept responsibility when things go wring, beginners are always blamming everyone else, Customers realize problems can crop up, and it’s what you do to resolve the preblems that counts.

You’ll readily admit it when your solution is not the best fit: and steer people to where they can secure something that works better for them. This is the real acid test of your status as an expert. Real consultants aren’t biased. They make recommendations based solely on the cuetomer’s needs, not their own desire to make a sale. Fortunately, you’ll be pleasntly surprised by how many people will still choose to do business with you even when you tell them bluntly that a competitor’s product is better. They will also rave about you to everyone they know.

No Selling, Just Buying

In essence, sales manipulators are only focused on what benefite them. Persuaders genuinely want to create a win-win situation that benefits everyone. If you have high ethics, prospective customers will pick up on that and want to do business with with you. They will also be happy to act as references for you and to steer their friends doing business with you as well.

Top sales professionals don’t need to sell. Instead, they create the conditions where people want to do business with them and in fack seek them out proactively. No selling takes place–just buying. If you can attract people who are ready to buy and then induce them to go ahead, this is always going to be easier than making presentations, handing objections and aggressively closing the sale. Top sales pros don’t need to memorize their tactics-they just treat everyone ethically.

How to Integrate Your Customers into an Exclusive Club

Consider setting up a website where they can meet each other and discuss ideas.

Run some customer appreciation events.

Give everyone who sends you a referral a thank-you gift that impresses.

Provide customers with opportunities to help you develop some worthwhile follow-on products and services that they will love.

Provide a way for customers to collaborate with each other and come up with new ideas and solutions to problems they have. Facilitate and encourage this actively and enthusiastically.

There’s an unfortunate myth that great salespeople are born, not made. That’s simply not true. Top salespeople are made through knowledge, and by learning to acquire the skill set of a top salesperson.

Master persuaders are top sales pros because people want to buy from master persuaders who they know they can trust. When you operate from a position of integrity, and seeking to create a win-win outcome that benfits the prospect as well as yourself, your nonverbal communication conveys an air of confidence, power, respct, prestihe, and trust. The higher your ethice, the stringer your nonverbal communication becomes. Prospects will want to be around you and will want to do business with you. They won’t know exactly why–they may simply describe you as ‘likeable’–but who cares if they know why or not? The bottom line is that you’re going to get the sale, and future sales, and referrals!

The ability to speak well in front of a group is a skill that no sales pro lacks. It definitely put me on the fast track to becoming a top sales pro and it will do the same for you.

Becoming a recognzed expert is one of–if not the–most powerful things you can do to supercharge your sales career. Prospects forget about why they should or should not buy from you. They consider the fact that you are a tecognized expert who can help them in really big ways if they buy from you.

I’ve been accused by my critics of turning salespeople into order takers. To them I say, what sane salesperson does not want to be an order taker? What I’m really doing is getting salespeople to stop selling, and turning them into top sales pros who know how to create the conditions for a sale to take place without selling–just buying.

–Frank Rumbauskas Jr.