In the present economic situation how will you survive with a long sales cycle? I believe it is time for all of us to get “back to basics.” we must Open our vision and widen our horizons. We must look beyond immediate gratification. We will have to find new solutions to old problems, and focus more on service. What would such mean to your business?
Here are a few things that will help build your freight broker business.
Credibility:
has to do with the words we speak and the perception of our “domain expertise.” Are you a credible resource for the service at hand?
Reliability:
on the other hand has to do with do we deliver on the promises we make. Do you deliver the service when you say you will? Every time?
Intimacy:
refers more to the relationship that you have with the other person. Do you make sure to understand the context in which they work? Do you go out of your way to make sure you support them and never embarrass them?
Self-orientation:
is the outlook or attitude of the person involved. In other words, is that person’s (you, the seller for example) more interested in achieving their own goals or do they have the other person (the client) best interest at heart – authentically, and not just to get an order or reach some other goal.As you can see from the formula for trust, if you are perceived to have a high self-orientation, then you will diminish trust. Even if you have a reasonable “rating” on the other parameters, you will likely undo any trust if you are perceived as being “in it for himself or herself.”
Green also provides a guideline for building trust
Engage:
understand what your customer values; be well-prepared to discuss one of those issues
Listen:
to the issues that are important and real to the customer
Frame: the true root issue or opportunity statement in terms both of you agree to
Envision: jointly, an alternative end state of how things will look when resolved
Commit:
action; offer specific actionable steps that are agree upon by both parties
The point of all this is that we must recognize the conundrum here. We must authentically have our customer’s best interests at heart. We must have faith that by doing so, we will gain more business. Yet, we cannot be authentically customer-oriented if our goal is to gain more business for ourselves! We will be seen as manipulative if we feign “other-orientation” when we really are dealing with our own best interests at heart. There will be no trust.
So if we want to grow you freight brokerage business and be prepared for this economy, then we must accept that there will a lower level of consumerism and a higher level of savings. This will affect all of us right through the whole supply chain. We should be prepared for a longer and more competitive sales process. We should train our sales people to always work on (relationship and trust-based selling) and insure that our major customers and products are being presented in the trust-based selling space. As business owners and leaders, we must change the way we remunerate our sales team so that their goals are more aligned with the customer’s needs (not taking orders of the desk to meet quota). We have to move away from the short-term gains at the expense of long-term trusting relationships. All of this will require focus, commitment and a drastic change in most corporate cultures.
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