Marketing Relationships Customer Service 8 Ways You Can Build Deeper Customer Relationships
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Writen by Adrian Pepper
As I work with small businesses, I find many entrepreneurs as remarkably ignorant about the current value of the relationships they have with their customers. In my experience, it is far cheaper to get business from clients who already know you than to find new clients and close the same sized sale with them.
So here are eight ways you can build your customer relationships:
1. Think long-term.
When you build consistent relationships with your clients over time, your competitors will struggle to dislodge you. Unless you offend them, your satisfied clients will just keep buying from you and your delighted clients will recommend you to their business colleagues and contacts.
2. Be thoughtful and give help.
Personal touches show your clients that they mean more than an income source to you. Since you have expertise and knowledge in your business, giving advice is an easy way for you to build up credit that will eventually become sales. When you have a reputation for helping with problems and supplying innovative ideas, your clients will prefer you for the value you give them.
3. Listen, listen, listen.
Listening to your clients makes them feel good and gives you important clues about their hopes and fears. Listen to the hints they give about their organisation so you can speak to their business needs. As you get to understand what your customers want, you will easily position yourself to pick up new work before your competitors even hear about it.
4. Make them heroes.
Finding ways of removing stress from a client's job and giving them credit for doing a good job means they will love working with you. If you are seen as a solution-provider for difficult problems in their life, they will pay a premium for the excellent service you give them.
5. Keep them informed.
For all orders placed, keep talking to your customers and avoid giving them surprises about delivery dates or quality. When things do go wrong, ensure your client is the first to know and give them several options for how you can remedy any problems you might have caused. You will find that clients love to participate in choosing the way forward so the pain of bad news is reduced or even removed.
6. Lead opinion.
Where you feel your client has made a mistake, challenge them constructively, showing them why you think they should change their decision. Good friends say when you are going wrong and so do good advisers.
7. Make introductions.
Introduce your client to people who could benefit them. Help them to hear about opportunities, especially where you have no resulting gain. Use your network for your customer's good and you will get a name for being a generous and helpful business contact, bringing you future business.
8. Stay in touch in low periods.
Fair-weather advisers tend to evaporate so if you maintain contact when your client goes through a sales dip, you will be treated with affection. You will also be trusted for the bigger and more important deals when the good times return.
Nothing beats doing a good job.
These are eight excellent ways to build deeper relationship with your clients but the best way is to always insist on delivering your promises and provide consistently good products and services. Remember that customers like to buy dependable and valuable goods and you will find your sales will keep rising.
Adrian Pepper specialises in helping small business to sharpen their marketing, increase their sales and grow their income. You can contact him through Help4You Ltd, through his website at http://www.help4you.ltd.uk or by phone +44-7773-380133. At http://feeds.feedburner.com/help4you, you can listen to his podcast for small businesses. |
posted by Alexis WATERS @ 1:00 AM,
