How To Improve Business Relationships – 5 Easy Tips

How would you like to learn some easy tips about how to improve business relationships? Let me start with a story. Over the past six months, I’ve been really exploring how to prospect for new clients. One of the things I started doing in 2018 is create courses around LinkedIn. I went down that road myself. I bought Sales Navigator at $80 a month. I tried like crazy to use that to get new business. And I failed.

Then I started teaching courses on how to set up LinkedIn better, and I had a few people take it and they loved it. But it never caught on. One of the things I learned is that people are basically LinkedIn-2averse. And there’s a reason for that.

First and foremost, there’s not a lot to do on there. You can read articles and that’s pretty much it. You know some people obviously on Facebook are playing games or joining groups or whatever it is. But the level of conversation on there is way lower. And the other thing that happens is something that I call connect and pitch. What happens with connect and pitch is somebody connects with you and then immediately, right after they connect, they sell you something. I just got one today for somebody who says, hey I’ve got business funding for you. A couple of weeks ago I got one from a guy who is recruiting for his MLM. I could go on and on, but let’s get to the bottom line.

Sometimes you get these messages in your inbox saying, “Hey, you’ve got a new connection request on LinkedIn.” When you check it out, before you can even exit the program, the person is already pitching you what they want to sell you.

If you’re one of those people that get a lot of that kind of contact, chances are you’re not gonna be real anxious to log in and try that same thing yourself. Why? Because it doesn’t work.

One Simple Email

Let me tell you something that I did. I’ve been working with a program called Nimble. It’s a CRM. Now you probably know the term CRM, Customer Relationship Manager. You probably have a CRM. You may have something as basic as your address book, or something really intense like Sales Force, HubSpot or Infusionsoft, or something along that lines. There are tons of them. But the biggest problem with CRMs is that they’re a lot like LinkedIn. Everybody’s got ’em, but not many people use ’em. Why? Because they’re not 100% sure what to with them, and often they just don’t work.

But I figured out a little bit of a secret, and that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. So the secret is this: At the end of the year, I went through my CRM in Nimble and basically pulled in everybody I did business with last year who I’d built a website for. I don’t do a lot of them, but I had a handful. I put them into a list. And I tagged them. Then I created an email and said, “Hey, I know you haven’t heard from me in a while, but there are a lot of changes in WordPress. There is WordPress 5.0 and Google Recaptcha 3.0, and they are causing havoc with a lot of websites. They’re causing a lot of people to get a ton of spam. On top of that, some sites are crashing because the plugins or the server are too old, or whatever.”

So I said, “Hey, if you’re having any of these problems, I’ve got a special for you. I will monitor your site and fix any of those problems for a fee. If you’re interested, just email me back or call me or click this button.” The next morning I got up, and all of the sudden I saw that I had a whole bunch of money in my PayPal account because people didn’t even bother calling. They just went and said, “Okay I’m ready.” So just by reconnecting with past clients, using that CRM and tagging them and sending them a targeted email, I was able to increase my sales before the end of the year.

Just Log In

Have you ever heard the term GIGO? It stands for garbage in, garbage out. One of the things I want you to do, and this is the first tip, is have a commitment. The commitment is to log in every day and do something. So here’s the first step, alright? Take a look at either old data or new data. Old data could be something from your QuickBooks or something that you already have in there. Verify that some of the people that you are working with are still at the same company and still have the same phone number. You can look them up on LinkedIn, you can check your email, whatever it is.

Maybe you want to add some new people. So let’s say maybe your concept is you add five new people and you update five old people. Or maybe you just update ten of your current contacts, whatever it is. So number one, log in daily.

Do Something Daily

The second thing is to do something daily. In other words, get in there and actively update just ten records. That’s all you need to do. In ten days, in two weeks you have 100 records done. And it shouldn’t take that long, maybe five, ten, fifteen minutes, worse case scenario. We’ll talk in the future about what to do with them and some ideas on how to maximize it, but the bottom line is you’ve got to start from a baseline of good data. Garbage, in, garbage out, so get rid of the garbage.

Verify Your Data

The third tip is to verify the old ones. Just go in and look whatever data you can find. You can just get on the phone and say “Hi, it’s Brian. I just wanted to double check a couple quick things. I don’t want to bug ya. Number one, you’re still at the company B, your email address is still this, and the address is this, you haven’t moved.” Just get as much good data on people as you can. So in that 10 or 15 minutes, maybe you make one or two phone calls, just to connect that or send an email, whatever it takes.

Tag… You’re It

Tip number four, and this is one of the most important ones you have to do, is to organize that data. As you start working with your old data, make sure that you’re tagging them or categorizing them or whatever it is that your CRM allows you to do. In the case of the clients that I put in that I was able to sell something to, I went in and put in WordPress clients. Now, I have a whole bunch of other clients that I’ve done WordPress work for, but they’re also tagged as people that are already buying my monitoring services. So I was able to go in and segment the audience saying I want to look at everybody I’ve done WordPress for, but who are not using me for WordPress monitoring services. That’s how was able to segment and send those people an individual email. That’s one of the cool things about Nimble; I can do a group email but it looks like an individual email coming from just my inbox as if I was using my desktop machine. So it made it super simple to communicate once I started organizing them.

Start out with the basics. How about: old clients, new clients, maybe even past clients, people that you haven’t talked to in more than a year. Maybe it’s prospects. Those are four categories you can easily add. Then maybe start adding in the types of product or services that you have for those people. Then you can start to build a database of good, useful information that you can segment targeted information to.

Clean Up Old Data

The final tip I want to give you is just do a data cleanup. That is, if you have multiple records for the same person, try to merge them. Programs like Nimble will let you find duplicate data and select both of them and merge them together into one.

Final Thoughts

Let me leave you with some final thoughts. First and foremost, get acting. Get some work done. Spend five to ten minutes a day getting your data cleaned up or added. Secondly, have a plan. Think about old clients, new clients, prospects. Think about what can you do to communicate with them, and we will cover that in more detail in future podcast episodes and blog posts. Log in every day, make a commitment to do something and start to build a plan on how you can better communicate to build better relationships to grow your business in the coming year.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas or questions about showing the concepts presented. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?

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Source: https://www.business2community.com
Image Credit: metamorworks - stock.adobe.com


ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

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4 Reasons Why Nurturing Business Relationships Makes Money

I’m currently working on a huge project for one of my clients where I get to interview successful entrepreneurs from all types of industries. On a recent interview I did, I had the pleasure of speaking with a friend and colleague who is a genius at building business relationships. According to her, it’s these business relationships that keep growing her revenue.

In a world where so much is being done online, we often forget that we are dealing with people. It’s people who pay you, which is why building business relationships is so important. Here are x reasons why nurturing business relationships makes money.

Trust is a big part of making money.

People will not pay you unless they trust you can fix their issues. Period.

In fact, I find this is often a key component missing in sales conversations. Business owners are often taught to go after anything that moves. This doesn’t work for two reasons. First, you’re better off finding a select few group of people you can cater to. Second, you need to build trust first.

There are several ways of building trust in business relationships both online and off. Here are a few of them:

• Consistently providing great quality work.
• Truly listening to other people when they speak.
• Acting with integrity in business.
• Walking your talk.
• Consistently creating quality content over a period of time.

Building trust in business relationships is not limited to these actions, but they are certainly a good place to start. 

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They can make transitions easier.

When I interviewed my friend and colleague on the topic of business relationships, she shared a great story about quitting her last job. Because she had built solid business relationships at her last job, when she announced she was leaving to start her own company a ton of clients went with her.

The way she explains it, these clients know she’s good at what she does. They want to do business with her, not just anyone. This made the transition into running her own company much easier.

They can send referrals.

Just because someone may not pay you, doesn’t mean they won’t send someone else who will. For example, I recently had a consultation with someone who wasn’t yet ready for my six-week business program. She did, however, refer a friend who is now one of my students.

These things happen in my business all the time. Because I put forth the effort to build business relationships, people know they can refer others to my work.

Colleagues can become sounding boards.

Every business owner needs a sounding board or two. In building business relationships, I now have a group of colleagues I know I can go to for help. This comes in handy when I have questions, doubts or fears. It’s also how I’ve been able to find valuable team members. It’s because of these relationships I’ve been able to build the business I have today.

Final Thoughts

Business relationships can help you expand your current business into new horizons. If you don’t prioritize building relationships, consider this your permission slip to get started.

Source: https://www.business2community.com


ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!

How to Strengthen Your Client Relationships So Customers Stay With You for the Long Haul

A business is only as good as its customers. But how you interact with your customersafter they become customers is perhaps the most important part of the business-client relationship.

Sure, you want your customers to be happy and loyal, but so often we focus on getting a new customer, but don't have any real strategy on the customer services experience once that client is signed. The result: customers leave, and you are left with a lot of time invested without the benefit of the long-term potential revenue. How can you strengthen your relationship with your customer so it can grow and flourish for a long time into the future? Here are four steps that can help:

1. Watch and listen

If you haven't done this before, you need to have a deep understanding of your customers' needs and goals. Many times, we assume what they want, but we actually don't ask them.

Ask yourself and your customers "Why do they need you?" For example, in my yoga studio, we want to offer certain classes on the schedule. However, if people don't show up for them, the classes won't be successful. So before we offer new ones, we send surveys and engage with our most loyal customers in our private Facebook group to get their feedback on class format offerings, days and times. We then listen to what the customer wants and decide if that is the direction we can go.

We also observe their actual behavior--they may ask for a class and then never show up. We watch and observe to determine the reason why that occurs. You can do the same. This can help you see signs that your client doesn't and develop a strategy to help match your customer's goals.

2. Take a team approach--with an assigned leader.

Managing the customer relationship involves not just you, but everyone in your company. The most effective customer experience spans your entire team. It is what differentiates your company culture from other businesses when each person in your company is involved in some way.

We spend a great deal of time in our yoga studio to ensure that every touch point for a customer is a caring experience. I assign different people on my staff to lead different initiatives and programs in the studio. It becomes that person's job to communicate information back and forth from the customer to my entire team and for them to work together on getting the outcomes they want in each situation.

You can try this in your business, too. This way your customers have the confidence that no matter who they work with in your business, they will have a consistent experience.

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3. Make Net Promoter Score your guiding light.

You always need to keep tabs on how your customers view your services. I use Net Promoter Score (NPS). The NPS rates how willing customers would recommend a company's products or services to others.

The score is calculated by how customers answer specific questions and range from minus 100 to 100. The NPS is great because it gives you unfiltered feedback where customers can outline possible flaws in customer service that they might not communicate with you.

It also doesn't take your customers a lot of time to respond, so it's easier to get responses. With the results from the survey in hand, you can make changes in how you and your team approach customer service or future offerings.

4. Make your customer experience exciting.

If your team is not excited about your services, your customer won't be either. In my studio, I meet with leaders of different programs to brainstorm what is going well, and not so well, at least once a month. We also create new ways to engage customers and get them engaged with the yoga community. When they are a part of the creation of ideas, that enthusiasm carries over to the customer during interactions in person.

When your customers see and hear how energetic you and your team are about your services, they are much more inclined to join you and best of all, recommend you to others.

Providing excellent customer service is perhaps the hardest part of business growth. But by having a customer service experience strategy in place early on, you'll be in a good position to secure customers who are happy, loyal, and complimentary about your services. A little effort in the right places can make all the difference in whether your clients stay or go.

Source: https://www.inc.com

Image Credit: Getty Images




ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!

7 Factors You Can Address to Boost Trust in Your Business Relationships

In one of the talks we give, we teach that business is about relationships. And that is so true: We entrepreneurs, after all, don’t do business with numbers or even organizations. We do business with people. So, business comes down to relationships -- individual relationships. And, whether those relationships involve customers, vendors, suppliers or employees, business is very personal.

To have productive relationships, then, we must develop trust. it's at the heart of every connection. People understand that trust is a positive emotion and, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is a "firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something." 

As entrepreneur and author Evan Carmichael has said, “The moment a person is not trusted by an individual or team, their chances for success within that group are diminished dramatically.” Therefore, building and maintaining trust in your business relationships is vital to your, and your organization’s, success.

Trust isn’t something magical or elusive. On the contrary, Robert Hurley, a professor of management systems at Fordham's Gabelli School of Business, wrote, trust is a decision-making process that can be understood and influenced. Hurley listed seven situational factors that you can address to increase your own trust level and affect a positive outcome:

Security: The higher the stakes, the less likely a person is to trust.

Similarities: If the other person believes you are “like” him or her, he or she is more likely to trust.

• Interest alignment: "Are we in the same boat? If so, I will trust you."

• Benevolent concern: Will you fight for me and look out for my interests?

• Capability: Do I trust that you can deliver what you promise? Are you competent?

• Predictability and integrity: Do you do what you say you will do? Do you behave predictably?

• Level of communication: Open, honest and regular communication builds trust.

• Let’s look at three actual cases we've seen where these factors came into play. 

Vendors. One of our clients recently went through a cash-flow crisis. The client was a construction company with a large percentage of government contracts; it had experienced a spurt of rapid growth.


But that growth, coupled with the slow-paying practices in its industry, caused the company to have a shortage of cash to pay vendors. Rather than go underground and try to wait out the crisis, the company put together a plan to increase communications. It called its vendors every week to update them on its cash situation, what it could pay and what each vendor could expect to receive in the next week.


The company also reminded those vendors of their respective, aligned interests and asked for trust and patience. Finally, the construction company followed through on promises and if it couldn’t, made sure that the vendor was aware as soon as possible. Within a few months, the company had caught up with payments and salvaged all but a very few vendor relationships.

In some cases, in fact, some relationships were actually made stronger due to the company’s candor.

Customers. One of our clients is a marketing firm that works with large and Fortune 500 companies. Being a small business, it often has to build trust to increase its share of work within these firms. Frequently, our client will start by winning a small contract and then use this work to prove its capability. First, it works very hard to produce exceptional work. Then, it's very careful to fulfill each promise, follow up and do what it says it will do.

The company also works to build personal relationships within the firm through regular communications and development of aligned interests.

Employees. One of the businesses we partner with is in a high-stress industry. Employees are on-call for long periods and have to work with customers who are often in unhappy circumstances. This can make the customer unpleasant for the employee, and customer service in general more difficult.

However, the business enjoys low turnover and a terrific culture due to its owner and his management team. Management has created an environment where it supports the employees and looks after their interests. Management also sets reasonable expectations and is clear in communicating them to the employees.

The employees, in turn, feel secure in their roles if they meet their objectives. And management builds on that feeling, having created numerous opportunities for team-building, group outings and activities designed to reinforce feelings of a shared experience.

Altogether, the employees trust their managers and believe that they will be treated fairly.

In the end, trust is a necessary component of all positive relationships. Fortunately, it is also something that can be influenced when, as leader, you understand its components and work to create a constructive environment. We encourage you to think about the factors listed above and how you can put them to work in your own organization.



Image Credit:Shutterstock
Source:www.entrepreneur.com



ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!