The 5 R’s of Sales Success

Here’s how the five R’s – Relevance, Receptivity, Recognition, Responsiveness, and Relationship – can help you differentiate your company’s product and services: 

Make your message more relevant. 
Top marketers are using their customer information to find better ways to make their messages and communications more relevant to the customer. By knowing customers’ needs, behaviors, and perceptions, marketers can target specific messages for specific groups – and have a greater impact. 

Know when your prospects are receptive. 
Your customer data can provide lots of hints about when customers are ready to buy (receptive). Example: Depending upon your product line, a customer who bought your product 12 months ago may be ready to hear about an upgrade to a better product now. 

Recognize your customers. 
Nothing makes a customer feel better than being treated as a friend upon return. So smart marketers try to integrate customer information in a way that sales, service, and customer service reps can easily check. Knowing what customers have purchased previously or knowing their special requirements gives reps a better chance to up-sell customers or solve their problems. 

Be ready to respond. 
Use your customer info to look into the future. How are customers changing? Will you need to change the way you respond to them? Example: FedEx knew from satisfaction surveys that customers increasingly wanted to track their own packages. So it became the first delivery company to develop tracking software. 

It’s all about relationships. 
Knowing the customer well allows you to strengthen the relationship.