Keys to Building and Maintaining Long-Lasting Business Relationships
Any given market has no shortage of marketers. In fact, most people are fed up with marketing schemes that are selling wares from toothpaste to insurance policies. As such, any marketing effort on your part may be taken as an intrusion by people who don’t know you personally.
Building the relationship
The only way to gain access into people’s lives is by being their friend. Once they are acquainted with you and they are comfortable with you, you can convert them into customers by introducing your service or product.
In order to devise a sales sequence, you must decide upon how you want to approach the prospective customer and how you want to proceed with your sales strategy. You must understand how to gain access into the minds of your potential customers and build long-lasting relationships.
1. Be Selective. There may be many people who respond to your promotional efforts, but it would not be wise to engage with everyone who inquires about your services or products. You must have it clear in your mind about what type of customer you would prefer. Since you are being selective, the process of becoming your prospective customer’s friend is natural and not coerced. Your customer will sense your genuine interest and begin to trust you.
2. Know Your Customer’s Expectations. Every customer is looking for a different level of service. If you don’t know their expectations, you will always fall short and not be able to meet their needs. Even after you have acquired them as a client, make sure that you stay up to date on their needs at all times. Continue to reassure them that they matter and that you have not forgotten them once the deal is signed.
4. Let Them Know Where To Find You. As stated before, you must continue to be in regular contact with them via newsletters or other means of communication. Often, you can’t “seal the deal” immediately. You may have to wait. You must implement the sales sequence and try not to sell your services in one step. On average, you may have to initiate seven times before achieving a breakthrough.
5. Maintain open lines of communication. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP. Know how often they would like to speak with you and what methods are best for reaching them, as well as how they can reach you quickly. It’s all about building trust and maintaining respect throughout the entire business relationship, which will hopefully be a long one.
Conclusion
YOU MUST ROOT YOURSELF WELL AS AN EXPERT AND BEGIN TO THINK AND ACT LIKE ONE.
Once you really understand these five keys to relationship building, you will be set to devise an effective and mind-blowing business strategy.
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You must ask for permission to start the process. If I am not asked, I feel it is an invasion.
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Medical Education Communications and Pharmaceutical Marketing
Discussion: Keys to Building and Maintaining Long-Lasting Business Relationships
Investing in long-lasting and attentive relationships are the best path to achieve almost anything important in life, including friendship, marriage, and good neighborliness, let alone business relationships. How many people in the world of sales have the time, interest, or personality to devote to these, though, in our current times? In my experience in the private sector – very few.
People who go into sales are changing their jobs frequently and are given sales quotas from the get-go. This means they are under the gun to produce quick returns by whatever method is possible, rather than gradually increasingly results which is what comes from long-term investment in relationship building.
The sort of person who goes into sales work today, in fact is encouraged to be superficial and glib, often, because that seems to be the only way to get the quick return. The old-fashioned peddler, who went door-to-door and sold goods to people who lived in isolated areas, long before every family had a car and shopping malls were everywhere, is the model this article really is hearkening back to. My great uncle was a peddler, and had a large loyal following of people who bought clothing from him from the Great Depression years into the 1960's. That whole world, and the culture of long-standing relationships and trust that accompanied it disappeared into the whirlwind of 1960's consumerism, and I wonder what it would take to restore it.
Posted by Ellen Shnidman
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Informed Ideas For Writers
Discussion: Keys to Building and Maintaining Long-Lasting Business Relationships
I just finished a ghostwriting contract on this same topic. My client's basic idea is that you have to treat each new contact as you 'new best friend.'
Posted by Grant McKenzie
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Advertising Production Professionals
Discussion: Keys to Building and Maintaining Long-Lasting Business Relationships
Good advice. Keeping the lines of communcation open with clients is key and a bit easier now with social media. But do they have to be friends to be clients? I've had some great clients that I'd never hang out with and some friends that made lousy clients.
Posted by Mike Weber
Friendships are great assets in business, but not required to be successful with clients.
Most important is gaining respect for one's professionalism, capabilities, integrity, follow-up, genuine interest and fairness.
Respect is not gained quickly, but, once acquired, it endures.
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: "Write It Down"-A Website for Writers
Discussion: Keys to Building and Maintaining Long-Lasting Business Relationships
The article is very clear and effective. It is an useful supplementary learning material. I will read it and discuss with my Conversational Business English student, who is a junior executive in the branch marketing. I think we will also perform some role-plays about the topic.
Thank you very much.
Posted by Carlostella Rosanna
Hi,
Very well said and logical.I am a freelance translator and just wondering could this apply to this profession?.I personally see that too much follow-up could hurt. Especially when recieving an offer and then this person "vanishes", which happens a lot in our case as translators.I have discussed this with fellow translators.Some see you have to follow-up, others believe that this mostly happens and we can not do anything about it.I would like to know what is your opinion on this matter. Thank you for your kind interest.
Kind Regards,
Reem
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Professional Writers
Discussion: Keys to Building and Maintaining Long-Lasting Business Relationships
Indeed! Yet I understand the marketers need to make new contacts and appreciate when one takes the time to build a relationship first. Trust is something that is built over time and requires forthright effort.
Posted by William Bennett