How to Maintain Relationships with Your Clients

Building relationships with your clients is a vital part of any business. Some companies may have a very distant relationship with their customers, such as with online stores. However, others might regularly meet their clients in person and communicate with them directly. Maintaining these relationships does take a certain amount of effort and commitment. You don’t want them to lose interest in your business and go elsewhere. There are plenty of things you can do to form and maintain great links with your clients. I love how Chip Bell talks about Sprinkles and using innovative service to attract and keep clients. It is about giving your clients something unique and unexpected. Here are some techniques that will help you to connect and maintain great relationships with your clients.

Get to Know Them

It’s important to treat each client as an individual. You should get to know them on both business and personal levels. Perhaps you make sure that you know all about their companies and brands. However, it’s also useful to learn about the people who you deal with on a regular basis. You might communicate with a range of people in different roles. Perhaps you talk with them mostly by phone or email. Or maybe you regularly take clients out when they visit you. However you deal with them, make sure you take the time to learn their likes and dislikes so you can respond appropriately. Everyone likes to

Go the Extra Mile

People tend to like it when a service/company goes above and beyond their expectations. It is more than just keeping your promises with your clients – which is important too. Think of others ways that you can go further than they expect you to in order to deliver outstanding service. Perhaps once you have fulfilled an order or some work for them, you could send them a gift or provide additional value of some kind. Maybe every order from your company comes with a free service. For example, some people have their clients’ cars serviced when they’re visiting them at their office.

Contact on Special Occasions

Staying in touch is vital if you want to maintain strong relationships with your clients. Even if they haven’t worked with you in a while, you should try to keep up those lines of communication. One of the ways you can do this is by contacting them on special occasions. This might be a holiday, birthday, or it could be an important event for them, such as having won an award. You can use Christmas ecards for business to send out seasonal greetings to all your clients. It’s also a good idea to keep an eye on what they’re up to using Google Alerts and social media. Then you know when you should contact them with congratulations or even commiserations.

Know When to Keep Your Distance

It can also be important to know how close you should get. Some people might become good friends with their clients. However, relationships should stay professional when it comes to doing business. You should also make sure you don’t badger people too much. You need to know when to leave your clients alone.

Maintaining those all-important relationships with your customers takes hard work and time. You have to put a lot of effort in if you don’t want them to go stale but it is worth it every time!

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