Tips For Approaching Potential Clients, Customers Or Partners

Anyone who works in business or has a job to build relationships with customers must know how to do it properly. Many people have trouble approaching people they don’t know. For these individuals, social situations can seem scary.

To be a good conversationalist, it’s essential to be able to listen to others. It’s important to ask questions that will uncover the interesting side of a person. After that, you need to be honestly and truly interested in what that person has to say, otherwise they’ll be able to see right through you. All of us can tell when someone isn’t interested in what we have to say, and it’s not a nice feeling. Don’t put someone else in that position. Ask questions about things that you want to know. That will help keep the conversation enticing.
There are many powerful, easy ways to approach people you don’t know, and these methods work especially well for people who work in business and sales.

Getting To Know Somebody

An excellent way to approach someone you don’t know is to do some research on their background. Sending a generic, unpersonalized request to a potential client or partner is not likely to be very effective if you’re trying to get something from them. It’s important to get to know a person and find out some information about that person’s business first, because then you can start a discussion about their interests and come across as someone who genuinely wants to be a friend.
All of this should be accomplished before approaching the person. With social media, there are many websites to find information about someone, and the information can be discovered before even approaching them. A quick review of someone’s profile on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can give you great idea of who they are, their background and what they are interested in.

You Need to Know How Your Business Can Help

When it comes to potential partners or clients, it’s important to determine how you might be able to solve their problem. There are many ways to find even the tiniest bits of information about somebody, which can make approaching them much easier.
Another great technique many businesses are starting to use to learn what their customers want is by setting up call tracking and recording services, which can provide great insight into the needs of customers. If the majority of your customers are looking for a specific feature, your current prospect might be as well, and it’s worth bringing up. Call recordings are also great training material that can be easily reviewed by the entire sales team.

Know What You Have To Offer

As a business owner or someone who has a role in sales, it’s your job to know what you have to offer. Before you ever approach a customer, you should understand exactly what you have to offer them. If you don’t know have a clear idea of how you can benefit them, you are likely to fumble through a sales call and lose the sale – essentially wasting your time and theirs.
If you have the type of business that can give away a sample of your products or services, this can be a great way to approach someone you’d like to work with. You can give them one of your more affordable products or you if you offer a service, offer a limited version of that service – just enough to give them a taste of what you can offer. Something like this can make a lifelong customer out of a simple short-term experience with your business.

Leveraging Relationships

It’s common for business owners to know a lot of people, whether it be other business owners, people they’ve met growing their business, or even friends they’ve made while attending conferences, business support groups or networking events. An excellent, easy way to approach new people or customers is to leverage existing relationships.
You may have heard of the common theory of six degrees of separation, which states that every person that you could ever want to meet is only six people away. If you want to get in contact with another business owner, one of your friends might know them or they may know someone, who knows someone. It’s quite easy to ask someone you already know to introduce you to someone you want to meet.

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Jason A. is a freelance writer with experience writing about business, technology and sales. He also has an odd passion for blogging on Friday nights.