You always need a relationship sufficient to do business. And the larger the deal the stronger the relationship you need. There are 4 levels of relationships: professional, personal, structural, and power. The trick is determining kind of relationship that is appropriate for you and your customers.
Remember a time to when you were the customer, and you were very satisfied with the relationship you had with the seller.
• Did you have trust and confidence in them?
• When they gave you their word, did they keep it?
• Was there an honest value exchange?
• Or was it because you happen to like the person?
We tend to do more business with people we like. And we like people who:
- Are similar to us
- Pay us complements (or appreciate us), or
- Where we are working together towards a common goal
When we buy our favorite drink at a Starbucks store that is new to us, our purchase is often based on trust and confidence that we’re going to get a satisfying drink. This is an example of a Professional relationship. We trust that we are going to get the same satisfaction for the money we pay
By the second or third time we entered the shop we are likely to have a friendly relationship with the barista because we like them. They enjoy delicious drinks in comfortable surroundings, show their appreciation for us coming into their shop, and energetically meet our goal of a great drink. What’s not to like! We now have a Personal relationship with the barista and with the shop.
Eventually, the shop becomes part of our daily “getting to work” structure. We treat it as a fundamental part of our getting to work successfully. this is a Structural relationship.
Finally, we continue to be a happy customer of the shop no matter who serves us. In other words, there is some consistency among the different baristas; any one of them can give us a happy experience. This is an example of a Power relationship.
In your own business,
• Are your relationships with customers more professional or more personal?
• What do you do that causes people to have trust and confidence in you? Or like you as a person?
• How have you become a part of your customers every day “Process”?
• How do you ensure that customers are happy with whomever serves them?
Remember, you ALWAYS need a relationship sufficient to do business.
QUESTION
How might you enhance the relationship you have with your customers and potential customers?
Chuck Scharenberg is the Founder of More Profit More Freedom, a consultancy that supports the execution of large-scale growth for small businesses. His practice has successfully grown businesses with processes that identify potential roadblocks and mitigation schemes to accelerate realistic execution.
Challenging Leaders to solve the Right problems by asking the Right questions!