{"id":182,"date":"2009-06-04T15:45:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T15:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wensmedia.com\/\/salesarchive\/permalink\/2009\/6\/4\/114500.html"},"modified":"2009-06-04T15:45:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-04T15:45:00","slug":"candor-as-a-relationship-builder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/uncategorized\/candor-as-a-relationship-builder\/","title":{"rendered":"Candor as a Relationship Builder"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\">\n<p><font face=\"Tahoma\"><span style=\"font-size: 9pt\"><font face=\"Arial\">&copy; by Wayne Ens<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Tahoma\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Many sales people are afraid to use candor as a relationship builder with their customers and prospects. <\/font><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\"><font face=\"Tahoma\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; They have been trained to &lsquo;sell themselves first&rsquo;.<\/font><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\"><font face=\"Tahoma\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In this effort to sell themselves first, they have placed being &lsquo;liked&rsquo; ahead of being respected as a marketing partner. &nbsp;In their quest to be liked, these glad-handers often fear opening the challenging and meaningful dialogue necessary to understand their customer&rsquo;s goals.<\/font><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\"><font face=\"Tahoma\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; These friendly sales types will often take every answer they get in a Customer Needs Analysis (CNA) at face value. &nbsp;If a prospect claims they &lsquo;give better service&rsquo; than their competitors, for example, these sales people will smile and say something like, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s nice&rdquo;.<\/font><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\"><font face=\"Tahoma\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; True advisors have mastered the art of playing devil&rsquo;s advocate during the CNA process on their way to building stronger client relationships and more relevant ad campaigns.<\/font><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in\"><font face=\"Tahoma\">Professionals will explain to their prospects why they play the role of a skeptical customer. &nbsp;And, when the client suggests they, &ldquo;give better service,&rdquo; the professional will say something like, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m playing a skeptical customer. &nbsp;Prove to me that you give better service.&rdquo;<\/font><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\"><font face=\"Tahoma\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In our Guided Discovery <sup>&copy;<\/sup> Selling System, we train media sales professionals to enter into their CNA&rsquo;s with phrases like, &ldquo;Before I can sell our audience on why they should do business with you, you have to sell me on why they should do business with you.&rdquo;<\/font><\/div>\n<div style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\"><font face=\"Tahoma\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This candid and frank approach may seem confrontational, but handled correctly<span style=\"color: black\">,<\/span> will be the building block for much stronger customer relationships than the old &lsquo;smile and pretend to agree&rsquo; approach to CNA&rsquo;s.&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/font><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&copy; by Wayne Ens &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Many sales people are afraid to use candor as a relationship builder with their customers and prospects. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; They have been trained to &lsquo;sell themselves first&rsquo;. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In this effort to sell themselves first, they have placed being &lsquo;liked&rsquo; ahead of being respected as a marketing partner. &nbsp;In their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}