First of all, before we start talking about client relationship practices. Do you know…

What is the difference between a customer and a client?

Customer is someone who will purchase item or services from a business. Client is someone who will seek advice and purchase goods and services from a business.

Now, depending on your business you are already building client relationship without knowing. Repeat sales and sales cycle are the core of revenue generation for most businesses. There are different types of client relationships that take place at different steps of the sales cycle.

In our case we are going to focus on an “online” client, for offline clients, please contact me, so we can talk about coaching your sales staff. So, our online client starts as a “visitor” to ultimately become a client. Let’s look at all the steps in between.

Client Relationship steps

Visitor

The visitor is the person visiting your website, you have a general idea where they come from, their device configuration, and demographics thanks to your data analysis, but you don’t really know more of them individually. Like, how would you get back to them?

Lead

So this is your first step on getting information from your future client. You are providing information relevant to them or offering them something special that will motivate them to give you their email address, phone number, maybe even more. This information will allow you to contact them and reach them if they don’t reach you directly. They also might select a less disclosing route and simply follow your social media profiles.What it means is now there is a way for you to get information to them directly.

SQL (Sales Qualified Leads)

Getting leads is great, now let’s make sure they can afford your products… That would help, so you need to qualify them. If not you are wasting your time communicating with people who can’t buy your product, which means no revenue. To explain that to you, we are going to use a simple example using cars. All Porsche buyers can afford to purchase a Kia, not all the Kia buyers can afford to buy a Porsche. Both manufacturers have their markets, and their advantages and build quality vehicles, just not for the same person. The key for you is to see if your lead can afford what you provide by asking them qualifying questions, could it be digitally, or using traditional methods.

Clients

Ok, those guys have made the cut, they purchased your items or services, they gave you their credit card, wire transferred unruly amounts of money to you, or not… But you made the sale, and congratulations to you for this. Now how did it get to this stage, using traditional sales techniques to a qualified audience.

Relationship Building

Just by you communicating with your lead, sql and client, you have built a client relationship between your business and your client. Now you need upkeep. With Valentine’s Day around the corner you know that in your personal life, if you don’t nurture your relationship with your significant other, they will leave. It’s a tough situation, but it happens. In business, it is the same thing. If you don’t communicate regularly with your clients, they will look for other providers. Your goal is to make sure if they look for a product or service  you are selling. They don’t think much more than they need and go straight to you. People are creature of habits, but they also have a curious side. That side wants them to try other things. Your goal is for them to use their curiosity elsewhere than with your business.

What makes the competition different from you?

Imagine you are selling a product similar to a competitor, same product, same price. Why would your client choose you and not your competition? Because of YOU, could it be your image, the additional services you provide or simply because you built a relationship with them. The image you project, we can work on it, it’s called branding strategy. The additional services go with your marketing strategy and your go to market strategy. Now, on your relationship building skills they can be personal or global and those are part of your strategy as well, as established tactics to be executed.

How do I get a my clients through that cycle?

If you are a large and global business, you have a team of hundreds of people segmented in smaller teams to take care of individual sections of your sales funnel. Now, if you are a Small or Medium size business, you can use a consultant. A consultant will assess your business situation, needs and growth plan. Wait, that’s what we do, and if you read this article all the way til now, you have to agree with me… Or at least I sure hope so. So don’t be shy, contact us, and we will go from there… Now if you don’t want to be that committed yet, you can follow us on Facebook and you’ll be able to read more articles like this one.