Relationships - the key to successful selling

I started my career selling Dot matrix printers to businesses around a small town in South India, where I grew up. Selling wasn’t easy then and doesn’t seem any easier now. To succeed in selling you need a killer product or brand or both. Without a sustainable competitive niche there are rarely any distinguishing factors either with products or services. If there is a distinguishing factor it gets thinner and thinner every day.

Given this seemingly bleak outlook, I believe one of the many ways to succeed in selling is the relationships one has built over the years. Here are few tips to develop and maintain relationships:

Maintain a Rolodex and go over it at least once a year
Re-establish contacts you’ve had in the past
Participate in local networking events
Invite to lunch people you want to do business with

Finally, identify client needs and follow up quickly to win their business. Whether you manufacture a product, develop software applications or provide a service, do your due diligence first and then follow up on a regular basis.

Happy selling!

-- Preetham Morkonda, Project Services Director, Documentation Strategies Inc.