What exactly does it mean to be connected to your customers? In this blog for Training Industry, Carew CEO Jeff Seeley proposes five questions that sales leaders should be asking to determine whether their sales team members are building connections with customers that will be beneficial for both parties…As a sales leader, how many times have you experienced a customer call with one of your sales team members that didn’t go as well as expected? It isn’t usually a lack of preparation that undermines these customer meetings (what sales professional doesn’t prepare for a sales call with his or her boss?); rather, the dynamic is symptomatic of a more chronic condition in which the sales professional doesn’t have the position or strength of relationship with the customer that we thought they had. How can we, as sales leaders, better diagnose our team members’ level and quality of “connectedness” with their customers without being at every sales call?

Connectedness is defined a multitude of ways. Unfortunately, it often refers to an electronic connection via email, LinkedIn or other social media platforms. For the purposes of cultivating productive, long-term customer relationships, connectedness is defined as the sales professional’s level of understanding, engagement, alignment and partnership with the customer. Here are five key questions to ask sales team members to gauge their connectedness at any given client organization…Read the entire blog here.