Inside relationships

Published: Tue, 01/11/22

Best Practice #13: Has an excellent relationship with customer service, purchasing and all support staff inside his/her organization.

by Dave Kahle

This is such an important practice that I have named it one of my top eleven time management strategies. If you have the book, 11 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople, you’ll see that it is secret number nine.

I had to learn this the hard way. I was a heavy-hitting, driven salesperson. I’d stop into the office, drop off work for everyone, and head back out to my territory. I just assumed that everyone would do the jobs that I had deposited on them. My task-oriented style put a number of people off, and my operations manager warned me that I was creating ill-will among the office staff.

It took a while, but I finally decided that I needed them to be on my side. So, I apologized, bought everyone a gift, and tried to re-start the relationship on a more positive basis. As people gradually came over to my side, I found that I was able to be far more productive.
Instead of doing a project myself, I could confidently ask someone inside to do it for me. Since they liked me, they didn’t mind. Instead of expediting a back order myself, I could have someone else do it. Instead of walking a new and complex order through the system, I could have someone else do it.

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I discovered that many of the tasks that I previously had done myself could be done just as effectively and much more efficiently by someone else. That freed up my time to do what I did best – visit my customers and sell my company’s products. As a result, I was much more effective.

That’s why this is one of the best practices of the best salespeople. The average salesperson creates an overwhelming list of tasks to perform and things to do which then weigh him/her down and decrease the amount of time spent with customers. The exceptional salesperson creates relationships, not tasks, and influences those people to do the tasks for him. In so doing, he/she multiplies his effectiveness and dramatically increases the amount of time spent with customers.

It’s a best practice of the best salespeople.

To learn more about how to do this, read chapter nine of Eleven Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople.

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