Building a Trusted Relationship with Buyers

Building a Trusted Relationship with Buyers

For pretty much any company or salesperson, regardless of business size or industry, having trusted relationships with your buyers is one of the best ways to generate success. Buyers benefit from your expertise and valuable products and services, and you benefit from their repeat business and growing operations.

In most situations, though, building a trusted relationship isn’t a simple process – it’s one that requires attention and dedication on your part.

Why Building a Trusted Relationship is Important

If your business is thriving with new customers, you may wonder if you should even focus on building trusted relationships with your buyers. There’s no denying that relationship building is tough and can be time-intensive, but here are three reasons why no business should skip over the process:

1. Customer Loyalty is Huge – Having a trusted relationship with a buyer is one of the best ways to maintain a long-term customer. It’s hard to overstate the benefits of have loyal customers, making trust a very powerful way to ensure your company’s future growth.

2. Avoid Wasting Time on the Small Stuff – When buyers are working with trusted, long-term suppliers, both parties are less concerned with the small details of each order. Instead, everyone is focused on the big picture instead of wasting time trying to nickel and dime every individual sale.

3. Get to the Root of Problems – When you’re working with a buyer that trusts you, they’ll be much more likely to by up-front about any problems that they run into with your business. Rather than looking into competitors, they’ll be much more likely to want to work to resolve any issues. Your long-standing relationship is valuable to them too. Without a trusted relationship, unhappy buyers may simply become hard-to-reach when the salesperson comes calling.

How to Build a Trusted Relationship with Buyers

Building a trusted relationship isn’t an overnight process, and it likely won’t happen during the first time you meet. You should approach relationship building as a long-term project, and be patient as trust builds.

Here are three tips for gaining buyers’ trust:

1. Learn about Your Buyers and How You Can Help Them – Whether by an individual basis or even broadly, learn about your buyers and the ways your company can help them. If you’re approaching a specific client, learn anything you can about them and their business ahead of time. If you’re meeting with them, don’t be afraid to ask questions to get to know them and their operations better. For garnering inbound leads, be sure to do your research and understand exactly the demographic you’re approaching.

2. Prove You’re an Expert – Buyers want to work with companies and salespeople that know what they’re doing. By being an expert, you can more rapidly build trust from advice-seeking customers. You should be highly knowledgeable on the products or services your selling, as well as the areas of your customer’s business you’re trying to improve. For example, if you own a carpet cleaning service trying to get contracts with large apartment communities, you would not only want to know about carpets and the chemicals and processes you use, but also how an apartments appearance affect’s renters perception of a home and how it ties into rental income.

3. Always Remain Trustworthy – Throughout all of your future dealings, always remain trustworthy. As difficult as it is to build trust with clients, is incredibly easy to lose it. One mistake can cost years of relationship building and efforts. You should always be up-front with your clients and be proactive in handling any problems that come up, rather than waiting for them to approach you upset later on.

Even at first glance, it’s easy to see how your business and sales prospects can improve significantly though developing trusted relationships with buyers. These long-standing relationships allow you to focus on growing your income rather than struggling to find new buyers to keep it steady. In the end, trusted relationships between buyers and suppliers means synergetic success for everyone involved.