Journal

Cold Calls vs Building Relationship

Building suppliers:
When does an architect is more receptive to your 'sales pitch'?
There are only two situations :

• 1. When the existing supplier (your competitor) screws up or doesn't deliver
• 2. When the existing supplier does not have what the architect needs

Therefore you should know what are your competitors' weaknesses, and differentiate yourself on those points. Build your reputation on these as your strength and products'/service' benefits.

I recently stumbled onto this great article on selling to Architects.  I agree 100% with it.

Basically, before we even attempt to sell our products to the Architects, we must know our products inside out. Not only that, we should also be knowledgeble on our products' categories. Before we can convince them to use our products, we ourselves must believe that our products are really the better option for our clients.