Selling is Serving... Customer Care Numero Dos: Building Relationships

Greetings,

Kim T. Gordon of Entrepreneur.com recently blogged about how 2009 is the year of One-to-One Marketting. She believes that building relationships is the strongest way to build our books of business. I cannot agree more.

Our prospects are likely in a financial crunch (Isn't everyone really?) and will really be looking to make every purchase count. They want to buy from people/companies that they trust. Compound this with our natural habit of buying from people we feel a connection with and you can really start to see where I am going.

This isn't all to say that you should act as though every customer you have is your best friend. As long as there are sincere feelings of gratitude for your customer (and there should be... they are providing you an income) you can use some smoke and mirrors to make you look even nicer than you already are. Some of these options are:

• Write them letters. You will be amazed at the responses you will get from a personal message written in letter form. This is a great way to reconnect with old clients/downlines who may have drifted away for one reason or another. As a time saver, you can save a draft of your letter in your word processing program and fill in the personal information of the reciever as well as a personal message.
• Send them Greeting Cards. Greeting cards are a simple and effective way to express an emotion like gratitude, congratulations, or encouragement. Birthday and Anniversary cards are also a great way to elbow your way to the forefront. This option used to be cost prohibitive, but It really isn't anymore. Take a look at my website and you'll see a very inexpensive Greeting Card option. (Yes... it's a shameless plug... but seriously... go look at it)
• Talk to people. This may sound obvious... but how many times have you gone to a party/demo and has the sales person just stand there with a stack of order forms and a calculator at the end? (I've seen a ton...) Get out there and mingle. Ask people what they thought about the products. What was their favorite? What would they like to see more of? These kinds of things can help you work with them come order time, but can also help you improve on your sales presentation for future parties/demos.

The time to start building relationships is now so get on out there and make some friends! (They'll buy from you!)

Stay Savvy,

Stephen