Creating client relationships is the most important attribute of any business or organization. It’s the client who decides to use your service or product; therefore you have to apply lots of attention in developing successful business client relationships. As with any business skill that you’ll develop and learn over the period of your business career, developing and keeping client relationships is one of the most fundamental skills. It is important to mention that it is essential to build up strong relationships as it will bring you closer to successful business development.
Let’s discuss what makes a successful client building relationship strategy. There are several steps in creating a long-lasting and thriving business-client relationship.
· First, you have to understand what makes the client choose your business over your competitors. Try to analyze why the customer came to you, whether it was a good sales pitch from your salesman, a great and descriptive website, a referral or promotion.
· Second, provide your service at 100%! This will lead customer in ensuring that you are who you are in terms of a service provider. Also, it will establish an understanding that you are delivering what your client is paying for.
· Third, we are all humans, therefore, don’t just make a sale out of your client. You want to use some emotions; friendly interest in clients lives to establish a friendly relationship. Know them by the name and remember what they’ve told you. Tip: if you have many clients and afraid that you won’t remember everything; use a diary or a notepad with all your clients. Write down their birthdays, wives, husbands, children names, clubs that they attend or sports teams they love. The more you remember and know about them the more you’ll be able to identify yourself as a trusted source in their life. It’s something like living on the same street for twenty years and knowing every small grocery shop’s owner. You are going after the same feeling!
· Fourth, always follow up! If you don’t follow up, clients forget or think that you are not interested. It’s you who is driving the sales process, and unconsciously they rely on you to support them in their decision making and pushing them to the checkout.
· Fifth, don’t be pushy! Don’t over push them or rush through the sale as they will get tensed and untruthful in relationship to you. We all know the story of a car’s salesman who drags to the sale trying to promote every small detail and as soon as you have your signature on the contract they lose their friendliness and any interest in you.
· Sixth, be nice! No matter what, always be nice to your clients. Even if a client decided to leave your service and cancel the contract you have to be nice. You never know how the client will be treated at another place which will give you a great chance to ensure that the customer might come back. Also, it might be that the client has outgrown your service and is leaving for the better suite, however, is satisfied with what you do. In this case, the client becomes a great source of word-of-mouth as he/she will advertise your business.
· Seven, perfect your service! You should always strive for better and perfect your service or product. In addition, you should collect as much feedback as you can from your existing client base.
· Eighth, in the case any of your clients want to cancel their service and leave, learn why they are doing so! Learning from your mistakes is one of the best gifts your failure can offer. It is a great source of hearing feedback about you, your service, your business and anything relevant.
Learning and building client relationships takes time and effort but once you’ve learned and mastered those skills you’ll always know how to employ them. It is amazing that many successful individuals became well known and wealthy not because they had a great business idea but because they knew how to work and build relationships with their clients.
