customer relationship - Shayo Blooms

With various mediums like social media and business review pages available for your customers to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your brand, paying attention to how your customers feel about your business can help you control the narrative that they spread about your business.

One sure way to shape the perception of your business in the minds of your customers and potential customers is to make them fall in love with your business from the onset. If you thought falling in love was only for romantic partners, you are missing and this post is exactly for you.

Here you go:

• Clearly Define Your Ideal Customer: The first step to making your customers fall in love with your business is to know who they are. A few ways to get that done include creating audience personas, carrying out customer surveys, practicing social monitoring/listening.

Every other thing you need to do is hinged on this particular point because if you do not know your customers, how will you serve them? And, if you do not know what they want, how will you offer it to them? Just like human relationships, if you go on a date with someone whose interests align with yours, chances are you’d feel an instant connection and you’d most likely want to hang out with them again.

Same goes for your business, if you know the mind of your customers so well that they are blown away upon doing business with you (or considering it) odds are you get to keep them because defining your ideal customer lays a foundation that you can build a loyal customer base upon.

• Be Authentic: Nobody likes clichés, your customers included. If you want to make your customers fall in love with you, don’t ever make them feel like they could get the value you give elsewhere because there’s nothing special about you. You can remain special to your customers by being transparent with them. Transparency will help you gain their trust which is important for any business

One way to practice transparency is to always uphold the values of your business so that your customers can depend on you to never go against your values. Another way to make your customers fall in love with you by being authentic is to always genuinely interact with them and leave no room for suspicions. If a customer thinks your business is shady because there’s no face or track record of your achievements, they are less likely to do business with you.

• Get Your Customers Talking about You: Always offer excellent service that leaves your customers happy and singing your praise. Think about this, how many times have you checked out a business or even patronized them because someone mentioned them to you? Happens all the time, yeah? That’s because when customers are satisfied, they can hardly keep it to themselves. Satisfied customers spread the word and, word of mouth is an effective and reliable way get customers to fall in love with your business and pledge their loyalty.

Finally, making your customers fall in love with your business is part of being customer-centric which is a great way to achieve a high success rate. Commit to get better at it.

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In 1954, Austrian-American management consultant, Peter Drucker said “it is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper” but still, years later, a lot of businesses are still struggling to build a valuable customer-centric business.

Building a business that is customer-centric is about putting customers at the core of your business so that they can have a positive experience before and after sales. This strategy is useful as it encourages customers to return to do business with you and develop loyalty to your brand which will improve the growth of your business.

With large businesses, there’s an overwhelming volume, velocity, and variety of customer data to sift through in order to build a customer–centric business, especially if the business is just embracing the culture. However, as a small business owner, you can imbibe this culture and make it a part of your business as you scale up in these four simple ways.

Here Are Four Tips That Have Helped My Business Over The Years

1. Establish a Mutually Beneficial Relationship: Your customers are not just numbers to be measured or analyzed when you take inventory of your business, they are humans and as a result they respond to empathy. Start by having a significant amount of empathy for your customers that enables you to identify their emotional needs, understand the background of their needs, and respond appropriately to those needs.

You can achieve this by shifting the focus of your business from just sales of your products and services to prioritizing the customer and the experience they have upon interacting with your brand at any point.

2. Get Customer Experience Feedback: Feedback provides insight into how your customers feel about your business and you must understand by now how important the feelings of your customers are. If your customers are happy with your product or service, the likelihood of them promoting and protecting the reputation of your business are high. So, always pay attention to the bits of information they share with you and commit to serve them.

3. Set Up a Customer-Oriented Team: Your team is the face of your business and most customer experience will be shaped by the interactions they have with the team. Hence, before onboarding any new team members (regardless of the role that they play), always assess them to ensure that they are aligned to customer-centric thinking and understand it’s importance to your business.

4. Introduce an Element of Risk: Motivate your team to always align with the customer-centric culture of your business by linking their actions to customer outcome. Ensuring that every member of your team prioritizes customers and their need will help you keep present customers and attract new customers which in turn puts your business a step ahead in the journey of building a valuable customer-centric business.

Building a valuable customer-centric business can be complex and long but the benefits outweigh its complexities. Always remember that your business is all about the customer and their need but being customer-centric is mutually beneficial.

“In sales, a referral is a key to the door of resistance”
- Bo Bennett

According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know. Another report from Marketshare shows that word-of-mouth can improve marketing efforts by 54%. Referrals generate sales; you probably know that fact. Did you know how powerful referrals are?

Every business can utilize referrals to double its sales. It doesn’t matter what product or service is sold; word-of-mouth plays a massive part in influencing people’s decisions about your brand. Businesses using referrals as part of their marketing experience have more than 70% conversion rates. The numbers speak for themselves. People trust referrals. If you want to generate more sales, you need to step up your referral game.

Here’s how to get quality referrals:

#1 Offer special referral packages: Offering special deals to loyal customers is a great motivation to get them to talk about your company. You and your loyal customers gain from referrals. Make sure the logistics of the package are analyzed before promising referral offers.

#2 Build an irresistible name: There are thousands of entrepreneurs, lawyers, or retailers out there; being the name on everyone’s list gives you an edge. For example, almost everyone knows McDonalds produces delicious burgers and fries. This is not necessarily because everyone has eaten at McDonald's. It’s just that everyone talks about them. Find out creative ways to make your business more popular, and you will earn quality referrals.

#3 Partner with other service providers: Collaborate with companies that offer complementary services in a referral program. For example, a skin therapist can partner with a masseur to promote their services. Offer a discount on both services and sell packages so that they can fulfill the needs of your clients in one place.

#4 Create referral assets: Build specific marketing and sales assets – social media graphics, emails, infographics; the presentation can answer your customers' questions and also get you a prospect over the line.

#5 Ask at the right time: Most entrepreneurs ask for referrals at the wrong time. The ideal time for referrals is during the project or whenever the client is giving you feedback. You can also create a referral email template to get the best response for your work.

Now that you have learned effective referral tactics, you should start practicing these techniques to get your current clients to shout about your company from the rooftops. Bringing all these together, it is essential to remember a few things about referrals. Firstly, you are the driving force for your business success. Do great work and be specific with what you ask your clients to do to win offers. Ask them for a referral appropriately. Finally, make it a habit to practice this more so it can become natural for you.

Here you go:

Here Are Four Tips That Have Helped My Business Over The Years

Here’s how to get quality referrals:

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