I want to introduce you to Tim.
Tim taught me more about relationship marketing than any book I’ve ever read.
Who’s Tim?
Tim was my Father’s insurance salesman when I was a young lad.
A really nice guy, never in a rush, and always welcomed at our house.
What Is Relationship Marketing?
People like to buy from people.
Relationship Marketing is about helping people get to know, like and trust you enough to become customers.
This method has many benefits including:
- long term customer retention
- multiple opportunities to convert prospects into customers
- increased chance of customer referrals
Use Your Small Business Advantage
When was the last time you called a call centre and the person knew you, asked how your family were and bantered with you about a shared interest in sport or music?
Large companies struggle with relationship marketing.
Small Businesses can use it to gain an advantage in the marketplace.
Here are five steps to get you started.
Step #1: Get To Know Your Customers
Tim knew my Father well.
His visits to our home were always welcome. My Father enjoyed their conversations about sport and work over a cup of tea.
To succeed with relationship marketing you need to really get to know your customers. You need to know:
- what they like
- what they don’t like
- your common interests
- what keeps them up at night
But be natural.
Record the information in your notes or your CRM software if you can’t remember it all but don’t treat getting to know your customers as a marketing exercise – it’s not a fact find.
Getting to know your customers needs to be something that you enjoy doing – it mustn’t be a chore.
It’s a fun way of doing business, not a business process.
Step #2: Keep In Regular Contact
Tim visited our house as regularly as clockwork.
It’s not as easy when customers are not local but you can use the telephone, Skype, email and social media to keep in regular contact with your customers.
Make sure that your customers never go too long without hearing from you and always know how to get hold of you.
If you don’t stay in regular contact you give someone else an opportunity to steal your customers!
Step #3: Share Knowledge
Tim didn’t just chat with my Father about sport and work – he also shared knowledge.
He told him about developments in products, how his policy was doing and gave him advice.
The best way to build a relationship with a customer is to share knowledge.
I doubt that your most fond relationships are with people who only ever ask you for things?
If you always try to sell to a customer they will get bored of hearing from you.
However, everyone has time for relevant knowledge that will make their life or business better.
Share as much of your knowledge as possible, show yourself as a real expert in your field.
Step #4: Build Trust
Tim advised my Father on life insurance – a serious product.
It took trust for my Father to act on his advice and buy his products, trust that took time to build.
Sharing relevant, useful knowledge builds trust.
Make sure you do what you say you’ll do and keep the promises you make to your customers to keep that trust.
Trust is the same in customer relationships as in any relationship, it can take years to build but can be lost in seconds.
Step #5: Make Relevant Offers
Being friendly and likeable is great, but sooner or later you have to sell.
Else you’ll never pay your bills.
Tim wasn’t a salesman. I would guess he probably didn’t like selling at all.
But from time to time he would give my Father advice about other products and services and because of the trust that they had established my Father would buy these services, without Tim even having to try hard to sell.
Once you’ve established trust, use the knowledge of your customers to introduce products and services that will help them.
Relationship Marketing Is Here To Stay
One thing is for sure.
The more people experience large businesses becoming more impersonal – the greater the advantage for small businesses.
Are you already seeing the benefit from relationship marketing? Please let me hear about your experiences in the comments below.
About Robert Peters
A great 5 simple steps to ensuring you differentiate your business from so many others who simply do not appear to care about creating a relationship. Great post Robert.
The thing that really amazed me about Tim was that it was effortless. He wasn’t consciously following a strategy to build customer relationships, he was just a nice guy sharing what he knew – yet in doing so he made a real impact.
It’s great that by being yourself you can really stand out and make a difference.
Thanks for your comment Paul, really appreciate it.
Hi Rob.
I recently converted my business over to practice relationship networking which uses pretty much the same philosophy you’ve written about here. Within a month, I started to get people spontaneously referring me, someone offered me a business partnership, an Australian headhunter came to try and persuade me to work for her consulting company, and a US company I’d never heard of asked me to bid for a major contract. I’m totally blown away by the change that’s occurred just from finally being a person and treating people like I’d want to be treated.
I love it because I don’t feel any obligation to ‘Sell! Sell! Sell!’. Because I’m taking time to build up a relationship, I’ve start thinking ‘Who do I know that could use this….’, or ‘How can this help….’. I realise now that as a consequence of sharing, people value your opinion more and tend to be more open with you.
I work in a high tech knowledge economy, but my prime resource is people. Being able to find the right person to help other people plays an important part in what I do. The interplay that forms the unconcious desire to ‘friend’ people takes time. I was taught that it takes around seven points of contact before someone decides to make a purchase decision. However, humans make snap decisions based on intuition, then rationalise it to themselves. If someone takes a dislike to you, for whatever reason….
Unfortunately, the majority of people in business don’t take any time or effort to do the most basic research before they contact me and club me over the head with a price and a demand to make a purchasing decision.
Result? NO SALE! NO REMATCH!
Keep up the good work, Rob – or do you want to be know as ‘Tim’?
Hi Andy
It’s great to hear how relationship building has made such an impact in your business. I especially like the bit about “being a person and treating people like I’d want to be treated”.
Unfortunately some people don’t understand that building customer relationships is like dating, it takes time to get to know each other and build trust – you don’t propose marriage on the first date!
Thanks for the comment Andy, I’m looking forward to getting to know you more.
Rob (a Tim wannabe)
Rob, it is! I never liked speed dating…
Exactly, I’ve been “speed dated” by many businesses in the past, rushing to get past getting to know me and into pitching their product or service.
The ones that I’ve purchased from are those that have taken the time to understand the issue that there product or service can solve. The same businesses can also use this feedback to help them be relevant to other customers.
Thanks for the comment Andy.