Suppose you viewed your job a little differently than the typical salesperson.
Instead of “selling stuff” being the primary focus of your job, you, instead, saw your job as building relationships with individuals and companies such that they moved ever closer to you, and as a result, purchased more and more from your company.
Your focus, then, would not be on short term transactions, but rather on longer term progress in the relationship. As you thought more deeply about this, you’d arrive at the conclusion that there would be stages of the relationship.
We could label the earliest and least intense relationship a Prospect, someone who has never bought from you.
A Customer would be someone who spent money with you at some time.
A Client would be a regular customer who could be counted on to buy on a regular basis.
But Partner would be the word we would use to designate the ultimate state of commitment. A partner would be someone who is totally committed to the relationship with you and your company. Not only would they communicate more deeply with you, trust you more solidly, but they would be committed to your success and, as a result, would buy
almost everything they could from you.
The relationship would be collaborative, not adversarial. They would come to rely on you and your company to such an extent that they see you as being intimately connected with them, and they don’t want to think about going forward without a relationship with you.
Imagine how much less stress that relationship would be.
They would actually like you, and enjoy doing business with you and your company!