Episode 22: How Important Is Customer Relationships
How Important Is Customer Relationships
I have a question for you:
How many times did you get rejected, when trying to sell your product or service?
Think about it for a second.
How many no’s have you recently had….?
And how are you feeling about those “no’s”
Frustrated, disheartened, maybe even questioning yourself and your abilities to sell your products…?
I want to tell you Emily’s story, one of my coaching students.
Emily’s running her own jewellery business and she loves it. Being creative and designing jewellery that she can sell.
When I met Emily, she was already running her business for 2 years – but she was struggling to make sales.
Every day was a painful experience, because time and time again – she got rejected and didn’t make the sales she needed to sustain her business and her life.
She went from event to event, where she had a stall to display her jewellery and tried to make a few sales.
But the expense of having a stall at all the events, left her with no profits from the few sales she made.
At that stage, Emily was ready to close up shop and let her dream disappear.
As a last resort, Emily saw one of my pins on Pinterest and arranged a free discovery call with myself.
From Emily’s own words, she told me that call was the best call she’s ever made in her life!
After our discovery call, Emily knew exactly what she had to do, to get customers and make sales.
She put the phone down and got to work.
From just one call, Emily realised she didn’t need to give up on her dream and keep her jewellery business running.
The only difference, she now had a plan and a strategy to move forward.
You see during my call with Emily, I realised that she was missing the most important ingredient for any success in business.
And that was to build relationships with your potential customers first, before selling them any of your products or services.
So, how important is customer relationships?
Let me share with you 3 reasons why it’s so important to build customer relationships first.
1. You need to give your potential customers time to get to know you
I have a Golden Rule that I work by daily and that’s 80% of your time, you spend on marketing and building customer relationships & 20% of your time, you’ll create and develop your products or services.
Most business owners (and in particular new business owners) will swing this around.
They’ll spend 80% of their time creating and developing their products or services and then once it’s done, do they spend 20% of their time marketing their product or service….
And that’s where the majority of businesses fail.
You need to do marketing every day and build relationships with your potential customers – every single day.
There are so many ways to do it in real life, but also online.
For a start, you can go to networking events and start building relationships with either potential customers or influencers.
Better yet, get yourself booked for speaking events where you share valuable content in your niche or industry.
Join social groups where your ideal customers would hang out.
Collaborate with other business owners in similar industries or niches as you.
There are so many ways to start building customer relationships – you just need to get out of your comfort zone and start chatting.
On the other hand, you can also build relationships with your potential customers online.
You’ve got options such as:
- Blogging
- Podcasting – similar to my podcast you’re listening now
- Video’s – either on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram
- Emails – sending a weekly email to your email list, with great value and tips they can use.
- Give free guides/PDFs/ cheat sheets or audios – any freebie that will give great value.
But at least pick one and stay consistent with it.
You see the more valuable content, help and information you provide your potential customers, the more they will start to know you, like you and trust you.
Talking about Freebies, I’ve got a great Resource Guide on How To Get More Customers
CLICK HERE to Download it for free
2.Now this takes us to the second reason why you need to build customer relationships.
Once you’ve started to establish a relationship with your potential customers, they would feel more comfortable by answering your questions.
Your questions, are super important – because this is where you can get to find out, what your potential customers are struggling with.
As with Emily’s example, she started building more relationships with her potential customers and then send a survey out to them, asking them what they don’t like about a certain bracelet type.
She immediately started getting responses, saying that the chain wasn’t adjustable enough. Or that the links were too weak. Or some even said they didn’t like the way it felt around their wrist.
Now with that in mind, she went to design and create a new type of bracelet which tackled all these issues and made a better product.
Once she told her potential customers what she was doing, they were already lining up – waiting for her to start selling her new bracelet.
Emily would not have been able to sell anything, if she didn’t first start to establish relationships with her potential customers and understanding what their issues or problems were, with one particular bracelet.
She did the same process with necklaces, earrings and broaches….
Now, she’s making more sales then she ever did.
3.Then this brings us to the third reason why you need to build relationships with your customers.
As in Emily’s example, she’s now established such good relationships with her customers, that they’re now asking her personally to design custom jewellery for them.
And some of her other customers, even said that they would only now buy jewellery from her and not from any of the other high street jewellers.
It’s so rewarding knowing that you’ve got returning customers who love what you do and like you.
Now if Emily never went to establish relationships with her customers, she would have never gotten to the point where she could also sell her products to her returning customers.
And the best part, she’s making more sales now from her returning customers, then from new customers.
You see, building a relationship with customers and retaining a good relationship is absolutely vital for your business success.
So if you’re now in a position where you’re struggling to get customers, or even to make a single sale…
Well, what about starting to build relationships first. Don’t try to sell anything from the get go – start conversing first with your potential customers.
Get to know them and give them a chance to get to know you.
Build on the trust, know and like factor – because this is absolute key.
And yes, it does take time – but in the end it’ll be all worth it.
So 80% of your time you’re going to go out there and start communicating with your audience. Go and meet people, be authentic and be of service to them.
So, let’s quickly recap on what you’ve learned today.
How important is customer relationships?
- They get to know you. You start gaining their trust and they enjoy and learn from you along the way
- You listen to them & they get results. Once your potential customers, gained your trust, they’ll feel more at ease to tell you, what they’re struggling with – and you can solve their struggle with your product or service
- You retain customers. Your existing customers will come back again and again, wanting more of your products or services.
As mentioned, I’ve got an amazing Recourse Guide specially for you – and its absolutely for free.
So you can use this guide to go out there, get more customers and start building your relationships with each and every one of them.
You can leave me some feedback below this podcast show notes.
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Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
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