If relationships are the lifeblood of your business, how do you, as a Small Business go about building them and nurturing them?
Do you actively build relationships or does your business, like many others focus more on getting new customers than keeping your existing clients top of mind?
Getting new customers is expensive. Keeping your existing customers happy takes comparatively little money.
At any time, but especially in a challenging marketing environment, relationships with your clients are more important than ever.
Here are 7 suggestions for building and developing your business relationships.
1. Network face to face
Face to face networking is one of the most effective ways of building relationships and even with Social Networking, isn’t going away anytime soon. Successful business people are networkers – they understand it’s about sharing and being interested in others, making connections and seeing where they can help. Grab every opportunity to network, it’s an opportunity to listen.
2. Be a connection
Delivering service? Don’t just deliver service. Always be on the lookout for other ways you can help your clients. As a copywriter I immerse myself in my client’s business as much as I can and ensure I understand everything about it. I use my relationships with others to refer relevant helpful resources. By asking the right questions not only can you find more ways to help your clients, you become seen as a valuable, trusted resource.
3. Keep in touch with your clients
I don’t mean at Christmas with a predictable Christmas card. Keep in touch throughout the year. With email it’s easy and with the internet there is really no excuse. Make sure you plan to keep in touch… otherwise you’ll never do it. Have a client you haven’t served in a while? Drop them a line from time to time, ask how business is, ask how they are. When times get tough isn’t the time to suddenly begin contacting your clients if you haven’t done so consistently. You risk coming across as desperate.
4. Know as much about your client’s industry as they do
Nothing impresses clients more than an understanding of their challenges and opportunities. What challenges does their industry face, What are the opportunities? What trends should they be taking advantage of? You may think they know all about their industry, however don’t forget they may be too busy to keep up with everything. Keep abreast of your client’s industry and send them articles, snippets of news and other information that they will value. This builds the relationships and positions you as the go-to resource because you understand their issues.
5. Invest in a CRM system
A CRM system does not have to be expensive or complicated and there are several online ones. A Customer Relationship Management system helps you get a 360 degree at a glance view of your clients. You can log all the information you like about your client, from contact details for follow-ups, projects, industry, questions asked, competitors and accounts.
6. Create and maintain a regular newsletter
A regular, newsletter, (or e-newsletter) packed with valuable information is one of the most effective ways of building and maintaining a strong relationship with your clients. It’s also one of the cheapest. Not only do you stay in touch with your clients on a regular basis you become known for providing valuable information to them. If you don’t have the time to write a newsletter, outsource writing it and distributing it electronically.There’s no excuse not to have one… if you don’t you’re missing out on an opportunity to connect and potential business.
7. Use Social Media and Social Networking
I’m going to be talking more about blogging later. For now, I will just say that blogging is a great relationship building activity. Blogging is about interaction and conversation. Don’t worry about comments – more people read blogs than actually comment on them. Focus on providing interesting content. You’ll find the conversations will carry on off-line.
Use Linked In to stay in touch with people you know and make new connections. Forums are a great way to learn, find out the burning issues in your industry and share expertise by helping out. And Twitter, used well can enable you to build and make new relationships. Take advantage of Social Media to make new relationships, and make sure you build ways to maintain the relationships as and when it develops.
How do you build relationships with your clients? How has it worked for you? Are there any new things you could try? How easy or difficult is it for you to maintain current client relationships and why? Share your thoughts – they help others.
