Matthew Reischer- The Importance of Relationship in your Sales Process

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Kevin Price, Host of the Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in Houston) recently interviewed Matthew Reischer.

About the interviewee

Matthew Reischer, Sales Manager at LegalAdvice.com. I have been in sales for 15 years.
Prior to working at LegalAdvice.com I managed a sales team of mortgage brokers at NationwideMortgage.com

Tell me about your firm (number of employees, location, type of companies you work with, etc.). 

The company is comprised of 10 workers of which 3  I directly supervise.
The company location is in Manhattan at 1 Penn Plaza in New York above Madison Square Garden.  We work primarily with attorneys and legal advertisers.  The chief goal is to obtaining subscribing partners to our legaladvice.com platform.

Tell us about why it is important for you to establish a relationship with your potential clients.

Establishing a real relationship is key to our product offering because our product requires and only works if we effectively leverage each individual relationship we establish.  That is, our business model is designed around facilitating a online social community that provides leads for attorneys and it is a necessity that we gain trust and authority within the legal community.
It is very easy to lose many attorney clients or gain many attorney clients based on relationships.  There is a strong network effect in the legal market sector and recognizing how to utilize this network through relationships is crucial.

What do you do to establish relationship with the key players?

The key to establishing relationships with key players is first to identify the decision makers at a prospective firm.  It is not always immediately apparent from superficial research to gleam this information.  This aspect of engagement may require phone calls to junior staff members.  In our case, this would be paralegals, secretaries, human resources, etc.   Very often it is the relationships with support staff that can help you identify the key player.

Thereafter, the best approach to turning sales leads into relationships is to listen and earn the trust of your prospect. Be sure to come across as well informed, confident, and capable. I regularly cold call attorneys and attempt to subscribe them to our website product offering (legaladvice.com).  The most important criteria for establishing the relationship and getting a sale is to understand the needs of your client.  When detailing and explaining your product, always make sure your communication is being followed. It is a good idea to continually engage the customer for feedback and ascertain whether they are in fact following your thought process.

What sales techniques have you found as ineffective in developing relationships, which ones work, and why?

I try to let our brand legaladvice.com do a lot of the heavy lifting.  It is a very strong brand and immediately imparts so many aspects of how we can add value.  I have found that asking when a prospect has time to talk is a sure-fire to lose a sale and the relationship.  Also, belaboring your prospect with information is also a dangerous road to go down.  You need to implant into a person’s head early that you are here to help them and can provide value.  A prospect needs to know early and almost immediately ‘what you are about?’

Contact information:

http://legaladvice.com