The Most Effective Ways to Build relationships with customers
In any business, connection with your customer is vital. It is through connecting with them that you get to know them, and learn about their needs. Essentially, connecting with your customer is the first step towards building a relationship with them.
Stronger relationships will lead to more returning customers, more referrals of similar types of customers that you are already interacting with (people tend to hang out with similar types of people, and people tend to take referrals from their friends and family more seriously).
Stronger relationships will ultimately result in more net income in your business’ bottom line.
While this holds true for any business, a small business owner has the advantage when it comes to building rapport with each customer. Due to the mere size of your enterprise, it makes it possible to follow up and connect on a 1 to 1 level, more so than it does for a larger scaled and size business.
That’s not to say that it is impossible if you are a larger business, but certainly, if you are a small enterprise, this is an advantage that you must capitalize on.
But what do you do? What areas should you focus on?
Truth is there are many things that you can do. And there are many things that you can focus on.
The one thing that I have found to be at the foundation of everything else, is communication. This is not a secret, or some great big reveal. In fact, it’s probably sounding pretty obvious to you right about now.
Communication to some can mean telling the client about your business, and promoting your business.
What I have found is interacting with my clients, having conversations with them is equally, if not even more important than promoting to them and telling them about our business.
Having very clear and transparent conversations, has led to a deeper understanding of their needs and pain points. In understanding these needs and pain points better, we are getting better at coming up with solutions for them.
Reviewing and communicating with our customers in turn has led to more business for us, in the form of repeat business from an existing client and client referrals as well. Not all of the solutions prove to be ideal, however the mere fact that we are taking the time with our customers, and taking these extra steps, is being very well received, and leading to building out more trust, and ultimately more introductions to their network.