Successfully Selling Yourself To Potential Clients

Being a good seller may be a gift, but it's not impossible to acquire if you've got the right solution and selling strategy to match your clients' tastes and needs. It takes time, but building a strong, trusting relationship with the potential customer is just as good as a guarantee that the prospect will turn into a client. And the client will return to you for bigger and more elaborate solutions.

In our IT Spending & Strategy Guide, executives tell us what it takes to win over customers and keep them happy in the long run. Customers also share their experience with selling strategies that worked for them, and more importantly, what didn't work.

An exclusive VARBusiness survey of end-users also appears in this issue. Among the results is the top three factors end-users look for when selecting an IT services firm.

"The most important strategy that we employ, not only in trying to bring the prospect into being a customer, but also keeping the customer, is really creating that valued relationship," says Tom Myers, president of Baden Technologies, a solution provider in Fort Wayne, Ind.

Myers would know since he's been in the business since 1986. Today, he's in charge of 15 employees who provide the technology solutions, including more than 100 consultants.

Before you head out toward a sale, keep in mind that the main objective to overcome with a potential customer will be the price of the solution, says Myers. Here's one tip on how to successfully sell yourself to potential customers:

Explain value when explaining the price. The client wants to see value in whatever you write down in that proposal. If they can see the value for that price, then you're able to overcome that objection.

Check out all seven tips on how to successfully sell yourself to potential customers and the exclusive survey of end-users in the May 14 issue.