Take Control: Stay in the Driver’s Seat

Just like in a car, in every relationship, there can only be 1 “driver” (lead). You or them? The sooner you “grab the wheel”, the faster your audience will naturally move into the “passenger” seat (which ultimately means they trust you).

Here are some keys to taking and maintaining control of the important relationships.

Use Phone Meetings: See the Phone Meeting Instead of Playing Phone Tag module to see the “qualitative” benefits and how they impact your leadership within the relationship.

Always Have an Agenda: Come to every meeting (phone or face-to-face), even if it’s a 5-minute phone conference call, with an agenda. Make sure they are aware of the agenda by putting it into the meeting invite, emailing it to them prior and by communicating it to them at the start of your meeting.

Lead and Manage the Conversation: Introduce each agenda, manage the flow & keep it on track.

Make Buying from you Easy: This sounds silly but if you are driving every step of the way, your customer will naturally move into the “passenger” seat. If you always have next steps booked (date/time & invite), an agenda, send them a reminder, take them through important info (e.g. quotes), etc.., what do they have to do?  Just show up and participate!!!

Direct Their Eyes on Attachments: When you send out any information, tell the audience in the body of your email where they should look – page? Paragraph? Line? Even highlight key information you want them to view and let them know you did this. This will immediately draw their eye.

Don’t Stop Until you Win the Business: Too often, salespeople do a great job maintaining control, setting the pace and driving the sale forward until the customer has the proposal in their hand or gives them a verbal “yes”. Then, they sit back and wait for the order (perhaps feeling they don’t want to be too pushy). Don’t waste all of your hard work. Finish the job by understanding that someone needs to lead.  Why wait for them!

Use your CRM: While you may only have a handful of live relationships, many of us have hundreds of other important relationships we need to nurture.  We can’t let them fall through the cracks. Every company, every contact, every email and every action should be in your CRM, including the next step.

Here’s an example of different “seats in the car”: