Relate + Engage vs Act + Transact | Business & Management

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Relate + Engage vs Act + Transact

Written by Tanya Lacy

This article appeared in Issue 1#4 (May/June 2007)
of Business Franchise Australia & New Zealand

By Tanya Lacy, Director, The Coaches Consortium

Gone are the days of selling to anyone that moved, had a cheque book and a heart beat. This is the era of ‘sustainable’ business, ‘wombat’ selling and ‘organic’ growth. Yet, with the pressure of business performance and hitting the numbers, how do businesses successfully evolve to build lasting relationships and still extract the cash? Tanya Lacy tackles this interesting topic.

BF: Let’s talk about salesmanship. What is it today?

TL: Anyone who’s done business with our business will know that before getting intercepted or completing our Intercept program we ask a key question. “Do you accept that the success of your business or business unit is a reflection of you”.

This is all about getting accountability into the pointy end of the business. If you have a role in your business that is responsible for getting money in the bank account, or ‘doing the deal’ there is not doubt you are someone who will need to have a certain level of charisma, energy, passion, enthusiasm and capacity to relate and engage.

BF: What do you think about the expression ‘Marketing is everything up to the sale’

TL: I think that everyone in the organisation has a role to play in providing the existing client AND the prospective client a powerful experience. That links to the feeling of the brand. All these touch points build an image and an experience that lead the potential client to a tipping point and a decision to buy. I think Michael Hewitt-Gleeson covers this really well in his book, “Wombat Selling”.

So all players in the business can influence the experience of the potential or existing customer. So that leads to an interesting point. The point of fit. Fit of your people. Ensuring they are a fit and that who they are sits well with the business, the brand, the work that you do, or the products that you sell. It’s about congruence with what your company is all about. If you get this right, the rest is easier.

BF: Acting and Transacting vs Engaging and Relating, tell us more.

TL: If I am not where I want to be, I will act or role play, I will go through the motions. Then there is no care. There is no heart in what I am doing or my contribution, I am most likely faking it. If I am engaging, I am listening, I am interested, I am present, I am in tune, I will hold a certain space with you to absorb the time and space I am with you. This is the basis of a relationship. You can’t fake relationship. Relationship flows it is real and it forms the ability to have what we call in our intercept programs ‘real conversations’.

BF: Real conversations?

TL: A real conversation is very easy to have when you are congruent with where you are coming from. When you have found your centre of gravity. A real conversation is hard to do when you are not comfortable in your own skin. A sale or doing business in my view is simply a series of real conversations. A series of real interactions that are based on a commonality that you find with another party.

BF: How do real conversations assist us hit the bottom line?

TL: Quite easily. Real conversations cut to the chase. They save time. They get to the truth. They don’t mess around. But once again, the person conducting the real conversation needs to be absolutely congruent with what they are talking about for the conversation to be real. Otherwise it’s fake. And the reality is now, as the average consumer is much more evolved, self aware and savvy…can smell fake a mile away. So there is no longer room in the market place for fake it till you make it. It’s now all about authenticity and real conversations.

BF: At the end of the day, we enter business for commercial reasons, how do companies evolve to relationship sell with real conversations when there is still a strong need to focus on dollars?

TL: People do business with People. If you look after people the money comes. Conversations are what people do with each other to form relationships. Your experience of a conversation with me, determines the level of interaction or relationship and engagement you are prepared to have with me. If I am only interested in your money and not you, you will know, you will sense my insincerity and there will be no traction. So I had better be in alignment with my environment or I will be a flop.

BF: Can you give an example?

TL: Sure this is a personal story. Years ago, when I was making a series of mistakes in my life that led me to my success….I dabbled in recruitment. The only thing was that I wasn’t focused on making money, I was focused on the people. What happened was, I started counseling the candidates and finding out why they were going for roles at a time of such deep and personal change in their lives. I got many thank you notes, but I made a limited number of placements and needless to say, this was commercial suicide for the recruitment company and the companies who’d engaged us. So I got congruent with myself and started to have these counseling conversations with decision makers and business leaders and they paid me money. I looked after people, worked on their needs and the money came.

BF: Sounds fine for services environments but what about products?

TL: If you become the solution, you become sincere in serving the person and looking to solve their problem, you form a relationship through the nature of the conversation which is about assisting them to solve their problem or resolve their issue. The relationship evolves naturally from that. The reality is that if you are not congruent with the business environment or product or service you work with, you will not be bothered to enter into these types of conversations in the first place.

BF: Results imply efficiency and getting the business done and closed. How do we get the business done and not just act and transact. It sounds like a contradiction.

TL: The quality of the real conversations I have will be linked to the depth of care and congruency I have with the products or services I am involved with. If I believe in what I do I will have enthusiasm, energy and passion. If I don’t and I am going through the motions, the rest falls over. No care. No cash.

BF: What are your key tips for evolving a business to this relationship selling approach?

TL:

Be personally deeply aligned with the business or service you sell for
Initiate engagement with someone if it feels natural you can always feel an attract, go with it, explore it
Be a great version of yourself and be yourself
Learn to ask powerful questions. Be curious.
Do what you say you will do
Don’t be afraid to progress the conversation and keep things moving forward
Work to ask questions that get you to the truth. You are either proceeding or not proceeding with a business relationship. Presume you are until things slow down then get curious again to get to the truth.

BF: What about closing the sale?

TL: If you have built the relationship through real conversation and demonstrate care and competency, you will build trust. Trust and competency are what we are looking for in people we deal with. The money changing hands is just the natural extension of the relationship being real. And that can be fast or slow. Relationship selling doesn’t have to be slow.

We do work with companies in the franchising world. Once the trust and competency are built, a flywheel occurs where you have ‘earnt the right’ to do business. Once you earn the right to do business, the speed of business actually increases, as does the volume. The key is then not taking the relationships for granted and checking to ensure expectations are being met. Once again, another series of real conversations.

About Tanya Lacy...

Tanya Lacy is a founding Director of The Coaches Consortium, a franchised business system distributing the powerful Intercept® coaching program. Celebrating 10 years of excellence in coaching this year, Lacy shares her insight with us. Access to the Intercept® program and franchise enquiries for coaches and business operators here and overseas at www.thecoachesconsortium.com

A CASE STUDY

“Working with Riviera Marine, a luxury yacht manufacturer on Queensland’s Gold Coast:

We got to understand their Vision and Ethos, the types of people they liked to deal with. Through building relationships we ‘earned the right and trust’ to understand who their suppliers were. We had started kicking around the concept of strategic alliance Intercept® coaching where suppliers and clients come together and build from the philosophies that are shared in our Intercept® program.
Over a coffee on day, the Managing Director gave me a list of people and companies that had dealings with his organisation who he felt would gain business and personal benefit from experiencing our programs and being Intercepted.
He personally wrote to those companies on our behalf and introduced us. We followed up.
One of these organisations that stood out to me was Cummins Engine Company, headquartered in Melbourne. We approached Cummins. We had a conversation with one of the key people who had the relationship supplying engines to Riviera. We engaged with them, built relationship, got them to experience the program.
One person experienced it, then referred us to 2 more and then the program cascaded down the business in Melbourne’s headquarters to Asia & New Zealand. Now some 7 years later we have a National Preferred Supplier Agreement with Cummins Engine company to partner and supply Intercept® coaching and development to them as part of their internal development program for leaders, managers and teams”.