Teaching Trainees to Build Great Relationships

A few key ways a sales trainer can help trainees become experts at relationship building:

• Teach people how to shake hands and make confident eye contact.
• Instruct a trainee to use the customer’s name three times in the first five minutes of the conversation.
• Recommend trainees scan their environment and take a genuine interest in anything around the customer that is likely to be important to them (pictures, books, awards …).
• After sales calls, inspect that the salesperson knows at least two pieces of personal information about the customer and recommend that they get this information before talking business.

 Shifting focus from spilling all your information to gathering personal information will create an immediate shift in having people interested in speaking with you. As you practice and develop relationship selling, it will also lead to repeat business and larger orders for you and your team.