3 Steps to Building Lasting Customer Relationships

Relationships with Customers Are Like My Relationship with Riley, My Golden Retriever

Like any good golden retriever, my buddy Riley
is serenely uncomplicated and ecumenical with his affections. He loves anybody
who plies him with kibble twice a day, patiently tosses him his ball, consents
to be dragged along on the high-speed outings we still call walks, and tells
him what a good boy he is.

The truth of the matter is that Riley doesn’t
really care who feeds and walks him. Anyone that makes him happy by taking care
of his basic requirements earns his affection. That is all your customers want
as well.

Relationships
are about “needs and deeds”

Customers have needs. And their relationship
with you is determined by how well you meet and exceed those needs with your
deeds.

Like our canine companions, customers have
developed a simple Hierarchy of Needs: Give me timely, complete, and accurate
information to make an informed purchase decision; live up to your promises and
deliver on your commitments; and, at the top, support me without condition.

Just like Riley, customers really don’t care
who meets their needs. It could be you. Or it could be the sales rep from your
primary competitor. Customers may “like” you, but they don’t care
about you. Customers only care about what you have done, and can do, for them.

Do you remember when you left your beloved dog
to go off to college or moved away from home? You knew your dog loved you,
absolutely loved you, loved you completely, until the car taking you to the
airport disappeared around the corner. At which point Fido largely forgot about
you and bonded with the new person supplying the kibble and the walks. Your
customers are the same way. If you aren’t there to meet their needs, customers
will quickly forget that you exist.

Key Takeaway: Products are interchangeable. Sellers are interchangeable.

3 Tips for Building “Needs and Deeds” Relationships with Your Customers

1. Treat your
prospects and customers as you would wish to be treated.

Ask yourself this question: If you were a
customer of your own company, what would you expect the customer experience to
be? How would you wish to be treated by your own sales and support people? Your
answers should reflect the minimum standard of care that you provide to your
own prospects and customers. Meeting this standard is easy at first but
demanding to continue. It starts with a CEO and senior management committing to
making the customer their top priority.

One of my CEO clients was a very demanding
consumer. That was his right. But it was often stressful to dine out with him
because he demanded perfection in the food and service and was not bashful
about sending dishes back to the kitchen. Yet when it came to his own
customers, he was defensive about his products and adopted a minimalist
approach to customer service, making it a challenge for customers to get the
support they needed. It took a long time to help him recognize and acknowledge
the inconsistency between the service he expected when he purchased a product
and the way he treated his own customers. Only then did he start earning the
repeat business he needed to build his business.

2. Delight your
customers with your commitment to customer service.

Commit to being completely responsive to your
customers’ requirements for support, both in the pre-sale period and post-sale.
The first step to take internally is to eliminate the distinction in your
company between pre-sale and post-sale support. All support interactions
influence a customer’s decision to purchase from you again. Therefore, all
post-sale activities should be considered to be pre-sale activities on your
next order with that customer. As soon as a customer gives you an order, all of
your support should be directed toward (a) having a satisfied customer who will
order from you again, and (b) receiving a great referral to another potential
customer. Those outcomes mean that you’ve built a solid relationship with your
customer. And isn’t that the best motivation for providing great support?

Another of my clients had a simple escalation
procedure in place for all calls into sales and support. All calls were to be
answered by a live person. If the front-line sales or service tech was not
available, the call was bumped to a manager. If the manager was busy, the call
was routed to a VP and then up to the CEO. The CEO routinely answered calls
from customers. He never identified himself by anything but his first name to
customers when he helped them. Imagine how powerful it was for customers to
learn later that the CEO had so humbly helped them without drawing attention to
himself.

3. Demonstrate
your appreciation for the opportunity to serve your customers.

With Riley this is as easy as scratching his
back and telling him “Good boy.” Customers may not welcome the
physical contact, but they always like to hear that you appreciate the
opportunity to win their business.

You’ll notice I didn’t say that customers like
to hear that you appreciate their business. I’m sure they do. But I learned a
lesson a long time ago from a customer that what they really want to hear is
that you are going to work hard every day to continue to earn the right to win
their business. Demonstrate by your words and deeds that there is no danger of
you becoming complacent and taking the customer for granted.

Key Takeaway: Customers have needs, and how you meet those needs through your deeds is the core of your relationship.

The Calculus of Trust: Proactively Manage Expectations to Start a Customer Relationship

After they close an order with a customer,
salespeople routinely dig a hole and throw themselves into it. Here’s how it
plays out. You receive an order from a new customer, ACME Technologies, and
your instinct is to quickly move on to the next prospect before Larry, your new
customer at ACME,  calls and asks a
question that you are afraid of answering out of fear that it will cause him to
change his mind.

The problem here is that even though you have
an order, you haven’t finished the job of selling the customer. Your selling
process doesn’t stop when you receive an order. There is one more very
important step to take. One that can make the difference between having a
“one-and-done” customer and a long-term relationship with a loyal,
profitable customer.

The most important sales call you should make
during the course of a sale is the first call you make to Larry after your receive ACME’s order.

Why?

Zero-Time Sales
calculus

Let’s first examine a couple immutable rules of
what I call Zero-Time Sales Calculus.

Sales calculus
rule #1: Your customer’s
expectations for your product or service grow exponentially in proportion to
the number of sellers that they talked to. This rule is pretty
easy to understand. In competitive sales situations, the customer has been
promised so many features, advantages, and benefits by so many different
sellers that within 24 hours of making their decision, they have a hard time
remembering which seller promised what. Instead, they have combined the best of
what they heard from you and your competitors and inflated it into a big
fragile balloon of unreasonable expectations that is just waiting to pop.

Sales calculus
rule #2: For every one degree of
positive expectation on the part of the customer there are two degrees of
letdown when the realities of the features and functions you deliver don’t
precisely align with their overinflated expectations. Having an
unhappy customer who believes that you overpromised and underdelivered, even
though you supplied just what they ordered, is not the ideal way to embark on a
long-term relationship.

I see this happen with salespeople and
customers all the time. Fortunately, it is easily, and completely, avoidable.

Your task:
align the customer’s expectations with your commitments

Here is what you should do immediately after
you receive and accept an order from ACME Tech, your new customer:

1. Call or visit Larry, the decision-maker
and/or the functional decision-maker who is responsible for implementing,
managing, or otherwise using your product or service.

2. Using the customer record from your CRM
system (call notes, email correspondence, quotes, and proposals) take Larry
step-by-step back through the buying process.

3. Highlight the key requirements ACME
specified for the product they were buying and review the commitments you made
regarding how your product or service would meet or exceed those requirements.

4. Review your final proposal with Larry to make
sure he precisely understands the products and features you contracted to
deliver.

The primary objectives of this important sales
call are to:

(a) reinforce in Larry’s mind his stated
requirements and how you promised to meet them;

(b) refresh his memory about the specifics of
what ACME ordered and why;

(c) clarify exactly what you are going to
deliver and when.

Key Takeaway: Managing
customers’ expectations is important in building a relationship.

(c) clarify exactly what you are going to deliver and when. Key Takeaway: Managing customers’ expectations is important in building a relationship.

Don’t Give In
to Your Fears

The prevailing philosophy in many sales
organizations is that the absolute last thing you should do, as a salesperson,
is call the customer immediately after you receive their order. Many sales
managers and salespeople remain hostage to the irrational notion that you risk
triggering a cancellation if you talk to the customer too soon after they have
given you an order. I have seen both sales managers and salespeople who believe
that even though the customer has just given them the order, they only did so
reluctantly. Thus they are afraid that if they speak with the customer before
the order is shipped the customer will give in to some monstrous case of
buyer’s remorse and ask to cancel the order. I guess that could happen. But in
more than 30 years of selling, I have never seen that happen even once.

Make the call
today

The most important sales call you make will be
the first call you make to your new customer after they give you an order. It
is also the first sales call you will make for the next order you earn from
this customer.

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