PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS – A KEY DIFFERENTIATOR
Does your business value personal relationships with customers as much as it should?
Partnerships and close personal relationships are vitally important in all walks of life and much of our social infrastructure depends on their successful development and maintenance. But in business this critical component can be taken for granted and is oft neglected with dire consequences.
In our increasingly competitive world of business, personal relations can make all the difference between success and failure, the vital ingredient of WIN rather than LOSE.
Maintaining good customer relationships and effective customer dialogues requires a lot more effort than the skilful use of a CRM system in the business. Often it requires acustomer centric culture and special effort, not just by the sales team but by the management team – in fact most employees can contribute at a personal and business level. The receptionists and telephone handling teams, the help desks and customer service teams, indeed all staff who contribute to the overall customer experience have important roles to play.
In last month’s SalesPulse™, we talked about employee engagement as an agent of transformation and becoming customer centric is a transformation with huge benefits. Customer centricity or customer intimacy is the major form of sustainable competitive advantage, at the heart of which are engaged and motivated employees and excellent customer relationships. With key customers and prospects, sometimes classified as major accounts or special accounts, such relationships are fundamental and need to be kept fresh and up-to-date in a fast changing world. People still do their most of their significant business at a personal level. For these most important customers, there should be an account plan identifying what it is we have to do to develop and enhance the business relationship. As well as tangible sales objectives which are easy to measure, we use a simple matrix for identifying progress, which we call the value journey. The objective is, through a combination of mutually beneficial projects (sales) and personal relationships, to move from being seen as just a vendor to being a trusted partner.
The account plan will include an engagement or relationship plan for key individuals within these key customers. In many cases, the depth and quality of the relationships and services delivered mean that the customer sees you as a valued PARTNER, irrespective of whether you are a commodity product or complex solution supplier. Understanding where you stand on this value journey with each major customer has great strategic importance to your business in a competitive and changing marketplace.
We strongly recommend that senior management takes the time to review your relationships and your customers’ perceptions of your business and leads the development of a living plan to improve them even if they are already good.
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