A friend ask me that question recently. You don’t, I said. Once you focus on closing, closing is what you’ll always have to do (and you might as well sell used cars then). My best clients - best in the sense of long-term, repeat business - became my clients without the close. We talked and then we shook hands, skipping the close entirely. It just happened, naturally, like becoming friends. If you focus on cultivating long-term relationships, relationships is what you’ll have. And you want those with your clients, don’t you?

Marketing and sales have often been compared to dating: you need to woo your customer to give you the love of their business. To extend the analogy, the close is akin to the moment of the first kiss. You just know it’s time, you just know it’s happening. You’ve focused not on reaching the moment, but on getting to know the other person, on starting a relationship, and the kiss takes place without planning.

Focus on the relationship. Get to know the potential client. Better still, don’t think of them as a prospect at all. Talk to the person, not the company. Ask questions, be curious, learn as much as you can, about their business and them as an individual and member of the community. Carry a conversation, start a relationship. When you focus on relationships not sales, you’ll never have to worry about closing sales again.

How do you close a sale?

Peter Korchnak , Sustainable Marketing blog

If you’re like me, you  open Facebook everyday and click on “home” to catch up on your friend’s updates. It’s such a easy and quick way to hear a tiny tidbit of what your friends are up to.

Occasionally someone has an intriguing blog post or lovely photo. It’s networking at its best online. I Love the internet and the instant way we can all stay in touch these days.

Networking is all about building relationships, so if you are using Facebook primarily for your business it’s important to clearly focus on what you want to accomplish with your updates.

There’s an art to putting up good Facebook updates. Sometimes it’s hard to be creative, cool and inspiring everyday so updates can also be mundane and boring. I’m not an expert at this and I know my updates fall flat sometimes,  but I have  noticed a few things that work or don’t work for me.  Maybe you can add a few more.

1. People want to hear a small snippet from many people, not many updates from one person. Too many updates right in a row can make readers feel bombarded.  I notice that when there are five in a row from someone who is promoting themselves, it feels too much. If this happens a couple days in a row, I can  click “hide” and poof, their updates are gone from my home page.

To avoid this being done to you, be mindful of how many you post. Of course this is subjective and what is too many for one person is fine for someone else but I have a feeling that there is a “too much” level that most people would agree on.

2. Negative updates are a downer. In general people don’t want to read about how f__cked off you are. I’m sure there are exceptions but in general people like reading positive and uplifting things. This doesn’t mean you can’t post a news item that’s sad or challenging. It’s all in the way you do it. For instance, one of my friends posts headline stories for the NY Times everyday. Sometimes not good news but it is very informative.

3. Adding photo links are great eye candy and will draw people to look at your post, especially if it’s a beautiful photo or image.It also breaks up the monotony of words.

4. Promote someone else who is doing something you love. Not only are you helping someone else but it’s using networking the way it’s meant to be.

5. Imagine you are reading your update. Is this something you’d want to read? Would it grab your attention or make you feel good?

If you use Facebook for your business primarily it’s important to look at it as a marketing tool. When you do that you realize it’s not about selling or promoting. It’s all about building relationships. If you do have a business make sure you put up a Fan page.

I just finished reading “Three Cups of Tea,” by Greg Mortenson and I was quite taken by  his story. One paragraph stands out,

“We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We’re the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their ’shock and awe’ campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.”

How does this translate to running a business? If you are always pushing to make your pitch, get a sale or trying to convince people to work with you, you are missing the opportunity to build relationships and learn more about who they are and what they can teach you.  In this way, your clients and employees are your teachers.

1. Find out what makes them tic.

2. Discover what they desire and need.

3. Learn about how you can help them.

4. Notice how they interact.

5. Ask to be taken into their world.

Strong relationships are the cornerstone of business. Without  doing that part first, not only will you get less done but you won’t build a strong team to move forward with you. The very first step of a good marketing plan is to know your customers first.  The same goes for employees. It’s all about focus and clarity.  If you want loyal people who are invested in your business, you have to begin with three cups of tea.

Being a non-techy I sometimes struggle to understand why I need to do one more social  networking thing. When Fan pages first came out on Facebook I thought they looked cool as the format was different, so I said why not?

After I put up my fan page I didn’t know what to do with it. It just sat there. Then the formatting changed to look like a regular profile page.  Still I didn’t really get it.  However in looking  further here is what I discovered.

1. Fan pages are public which means a person can open it without logging into Facebook. People could find your page through search engine searching while regular facebook profile pages are log-in protected.

2. You can send an update to all of your fans anytime. This is a good way to stay in touch with people about your new products etc.

3. When someone becomes a fan, it’s automatically published in their news feed so their friends can all read it. People you don’t know might become a fan.

4. You can promote your Fan page with an ad and it can help you to build your following and send people to your website. I haven’t done this yet so I don’t know how well that works.

5. Plus  a lot of reasons I still don’t understand- but it just takes a few minutes to do it.  My fans keep growing and I don’t even know where they are all coming from so it must work.

Become my fan! and to easily build your own Fan page  go here.

Have fun!

Can  you  picture  the archetypal used car salesman who, with his slimy smile, pulls at you as you try desperately to get out of the car lot.  Maybe you wanted to buy a car but you didn’t want to be made into a fool.

I’ve let myself be taken advantage of at least once in my lifetime and when I got home and looked at what I bought, I  felt  like I was conned!

As a result of  having experiences with over-bearing salespeople, many entrepreneurs  are afraid of looking too pushy.

Small business owners have almost gone to the other extreme of pushi-itis and suffer from a fear of selling; fear that people won’t like you or they will run away if you show too much interest in doing business with them.

Likewise, people are afraid of buying and making a mistake. When you have an entrepreneur who’s afraid to sell and a client who’s afraid to buy, both people lose.

Your potential clients need your help and they want to feel that you want to work with them. They want to be invited.  It actually feels good to know that you care and it will help them to get over the fear of making the decision to buy.

Hesitant buyers are quite often just afraid of making a mistake.  Here are a few things you can do to be supportive but not pushy.

1. Find out what they need and make an effort to fill that need.

2. Empathize with their discernment. It will help build trust.

3. Ask them how they feel your service will help them in their life.

4. Tell them you can see how it would help them.

5. Invite them to work with you. Let them know you care.