📄 Every business is a relationship business

Whatever people buy from you, and whatever the kind of need a buyer wants to fulfill:

No purchase is ever a strictly technical transaction.

Any time someone buys something, there’s a conversation going on in that person’s mind.

When you join that conversation, i.e. when you really get your clients, the conversation deepens, and a relationship starts - and inside that relationship, is that conversation.

Put differently: being in business means you’re in a relationship business.

It’s you, a thing you do, another person, and a problem they want to solve - and those are all related.

And if all works out well, you get money and they get your solution.

But this only happens if you create a quality relationship, and the conversation is about that other person and their needs and aspirations.

Here’s where it’s very easy to go wrong: far too many people talk about their offer and its features - but those only serve to persuade, and that automatically triggers resistance and defensiveness.

That way, the conversation doesn’t improve and the relationship doesn’t transform from ‘Tell me how you can help me’ to ‘Help me figure out if I should get your help’.

And that switch is crucial.

Initially, you’re a listener and provider of information, and that information is related to an existing problem or goal.

But after the switch, you’re a helper, serving someone in making the best decision for themselves.

When that switch happens, a potential buyer has gone from being curious to being interested, and good things can happen from there.

But, only if you take care of the relationship.

Because the sale happens inside a conversation, which exists in a relationship.

In other words: whatever it is you do or make or offer or solve or provide:

Ultimately, you’re in the relationship business.

Now, I often get asked ‘how’.

How to have conversations that work, how to build relationships, how to ask for a sale, how to ask questions that clearly show you’re not pushy and are looking out for their best interest?

"How, Martin, do I land more clients?"

The answer to that, is what you learn in my 10-week, 1 on 1 training on ethical selling.