Communicating to your customers
Communication is important in any relationship, and relationship between a business and a customer is no different. You need to communicate to your customer what is happening, what is it that you are selling, what are your daily specials, business hours, ways customers can purchase, how to collect points in loyalty program etc. You get the image. You need to communicate it ALL to build a trusting relationship with your customers. And you MUST have a trusting relationship with your customers to be successful.
Everyone in sales field knows that there are situations when the customer is forced to purchase from one and only provider. Then yes, if that is the situation, then the customer must come back to you, however, if they do not have a good relationship with you, the minute a new provider enters the market, they will be switching in the hopes of a better relationship. No one likes to be in a bad, dysfunctional relationship where one party feels like they are taken advantage of.
I’m not saying that you are taking an advantage of your customer
The point is not to say that you are taking an advantage of your customer, but are you nurturing the relationship either? Improving it? Making it better? Or are you just letting it be and hoping it will last forever? Do you believe that your loyal customers will stay loyal even when competition emerges? Are you making the effort to talk with them to know what is going on? Are you making your customers feel important in your life?
Improve consistently
Improving any relationship doesn’t need to be rocket science. Same goes with your customers (if it was, I would be working for Nasa). You can start with small steps and start by improving one thing and keep on improving it consistently. Quite often, any relationship improves naturally when communication is improved.
Find your channel
Easiest way to start improving your communication is by letting your customers know what is happening with your business. So, what is happening with your business? Are there events? Are you doing updates? Are you missing your customers and want to let them know that? Find one channel that is natural for you to use and start communicating. However, stay consistent with it. Then the rest will come naturally.
Why communicate?
You might ask now why communicate? Or why would the customers care? Good questions. Just like in any relationship, do not overthink this. The simple answer is, that when you share what is happening in your life, people hearing it feel important. Same goes with your organization and business. Your customers will feel that they are important to you when you communicate to them. You are taking the time out of your day to let them know what is going on and by doing so, you are showing that they are important to you. And think about it: when you feel like you are important to someone, that feeling is powerful. So why wouldn’t you want your customers to have that feeling?
Do not make the decision for your customers
Do not make the decision for your customers. You might think that something is insignificant, and customers might not NEED or WANT to hear it, but it is not up to you to make the decision for your customers (or any person in that matter). They have the right to make that decision for themselves. You just keep on sharing what goes on with your business and then leave it up to your customers to decide if the information is relevant for them or not.
Simple steps do it/Do the simple steps
So, start by these simple steps:
- Ask yourself what is going on with your business?
- Choose 1 channel that feels natural for you to use
- Start communicating to your customers
- Stay consistent with it
Enjoy the fruit and start seeing how the relationship starts flourishing just by improving the communication a little bit.
Just like in any relationship, communication is the key to make it a successful one. Customers are no different; they want to feel as important as your spouse. Start with the simple, little things (remember, this is not rocket science), keep it consistent and you’ll see the overall relationship with your customers improve over time. And we all know it, not just the salespeople, that when a customer is a happy customer, then they’ll keep on coming back and stay loyal.
Making your customers matter
So, let’s keep on communicating to our partners, friends, family and CUSTOMERS! 🙂 And like we say here at FINN-X: Make your customers matter. So how about it, start making your customers matter, TODAY, by communicating to them. Yay – thanks for reading.