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The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success

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It's often been said that successful selling depends on the relationships you have. I never really thought much about what that meant until I read The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success by Jerry Acuff with Wally Wood. Building relationships because you truly like and care about others can have some far-reaching ramifications in your personal and professional life.

Contents: Climbing the Relationship Pyramid; What Strong Relationships Require; Twenty Questions; Good Questions Promote Meaningful Dialogue; It's a Small World After All; It's Not What You Know - It's What You Do; Why You Ought to Map Your Relationships; Pyramid Hopping for Fun and Profit; Build Respect, Set Goals; and Maintain Relationships; And What If You're the Boss?; Notes; Index

It was tempting to go into this book with a somewhat cynical attitude. "If I pretend I have lots in common with this person, I can sell them anything!" But that's not what we're talking about here. It's a conscious effort to learn about the person on the other side of the table... What interests them? What makes them tick? It's these type of questions and concerns that make up the core "20 questions" that the authors recommend you focus on. It's not a matter of walking in with a checklist, asking them each question in rapid-fire order just to record the answers. Rather, it's a way to move beyond the "will you buy" position to one of understanding, respect, and potentially friendship. As a seller, you rank somewhere on the relationship pyramid with your customer: people who don't know me by name, people who know me by name, people who like me, people who are friendly with me, people who respect me, and people who value a relationship with me. The higher you are on that pyramid, the less selling that goes on because you already have established a foundation of trust with that person.

They also introduce the concept of "pyramid hopping". This is a way to leverage your relationship with one person to immediately move higher on someone else's pyramid. For instance, you may know someone who I'm interested in meeting for some reason. If you have a good relationship with that person and introduce me, then I immediately move higher up on that new person's relationship pyramid. So instead of being just one nameless face trying to get attention, you've moved up the pyramid based on the relationship that your friend has with that person. It's different than networking, which is just a matter of trying to get your name out there. It's more a case of specifically asking for introduction and contacts based on the relationships you have. A very powerful concept...

If you're serious about building your professional contacts, this is an excellent book to get you headed in the right direction for the right reasons...

Author - Jerry Acuff, Is the President of Delta Point, The Sales Agency (DP) in Scottsdale, Arizona, DP works with market-leading companies including AstraZeneca, Novartis, Roche, Schwarz Pharma, Pfizer, Chubb Insurance, Century 21, Avnet, Smith and Nephew, Sims Level One and Abbott to implement innovate ways to sell and market in today's crowded marketplace.

Summary - What is the key to strategic influence and selling success? The content of this book is based on the authors believe that business success depends on many factors such as product innovation, financial and other controls, and efficient marketing, however, business success cannot be sustained without talent, climate, relationships, coaching, effectiveness, and recognition.

This book provides career professionals with creative, insightful and innovative ideas and key strategic influences for selling success. Your social relationships and actions should encourage people to return to your Blog, LinkedIn group, Facebook page, or Twitter following. As social media continues to evolve certain principles just make sense and are merely extensions of sales fundamentals that have been around for years. Examples include six tips for better social media relationships and are:

* Send a quick personal note every time you follow/fan/friend or someone.
* Leave a quick comment on friends' blogs every time you visit site.
* Retweet, link to, and talk about other views. The goal is to add value.
* Respond to everyone who reaches out. The more active the more "requests".
* Never pitch people without getting to know them. Establish recognition and trust.
* Be grateful and explicitly thank people. Recognition and gratitude.

According to Conrey blog for closers advises the one basic rule for employing social media is "Don't sell anything ...all you have to do is be visible and authentic. Be available when people are complaining or questioning about what you're selling. The more value you offer, the more valuable you become to customers, prospects, co-workers, and your organization,"

The author provides insightful information, models and strategy examples which substantiate his selling success approach. The five things gleaned from this book regarding the importance of The Relationship Edge: The Key To Strategic Influence and Selling Success are:

1. Believe others are important, focus.
2. Appreciate and understand people's differences and their points of view.
3. Make people feel important.
4. Seek common ground by learning about people.
5. Listen because you want to hear.

Concluding that The Relationship Edge is based on approaches and suggested solutions to serve and reinforce existing strategic positions to win and influence people. Winning relationships result when two human beings make a positive connection. Strong relationships take time to gather information, build trust, responsibility demonstrated and integrity. By knowing your product, service or idea intimately and presenting its value to prospects and clients enable you to answer questions and provide solutions to problems.

"Not every seed you plant is going to sprout,just as not every popcorn kernel is going to pop.But if you want a garden, the more seeds you plant,the better the odds you'll have vegetables someday."

Having read all of Jerry's books, I was excited to read the latest version of his classic, The Relationship Edge, which has been updated to include some great thoughts and tips on using the web and social media for building interpersonal relationships in life and business.

Once again, I understand why Jerry's been called "the Dale Carnegie of the twenty-first century". Simply put, this book quickly and clearly explains what we should all do to have stronger ties with the various people in our life, personal and professional.

In an era where we too often forget to do the "little things", this book is a one-stop resource that we should all have in our library.