Think, Really Think, About Your B2B Customer Relationships
By Jeffrey L. Cohen
Fri, Mar 5, 2010
I just read a truly inspiring blog post and the relevance to readers of this site is immense. Sometimes while surfing the web, you follow a circuitous path to a post, and you know it must be karma. You follow a friend’s favorited post, and find another post with a list, and you happen to click on a list to a particular post, and BAM! The following post was the result of that journey. I can call this my Feel Good Friday post. That could become a new trend.
Sonia Simone writes the Remarkable Conversation Blog and she helps create better customer relationships with incredibly effective communication. She posted a list entitled 50 Things Your Customers Wish You Knew, which really drives home the point, with 50 sharp nails, that you must view your B2B customer relationships as real relationships. Not dollars, not points on graph, not check boxes in a CRM system, not obligations, but as people with wants, needs and desires just like yours. This goes well beyond providing solutions. You really do have to care, but more importantly, demonstrate that you care.
This approach to customers is relevant whether you sell products, services, or even serve internal customers. No matter what your job is, you have a customer. There is something that you do that is for someone else’s benefit. Before you pick up the phone for your next sales call, or contact a client with a status report, read through this list and think about your interactions from the other end of the phone. Does what you’re telling your customer or client sound ridiculous? Does it show them a lack of respect? If you know your latest last minute report will be rejected by your boss, what does that say?
So here are the first 10 points from the list, and make sure you click through to read the rest. Your customers will thank you, and will notice a change in the relationship. By reading the rest of the list on Sonia’s site, you might find other posts that inspire you like this one inspired me.
1. I don’t need you to be perfect, but I do need to know I can rely on you.
2. Telling me what you don’t know makes me trust you.
3. It means a lot when you take the time to thank me for my business or a referral.
4. You don’t need to do all that much to be a superhero. Just do exactly what you say you will do.
5. A friendly voice on the other side of the phone means more than you can imagine.
6. Your employees treat me about as well as you treat them.
7. I don’t mind spending the money, as long as I feel I’m getting real value.
8. My life is really stressful. If you can reduce that stress, you become immensely valuable to me.
9. I want to tell you what would make this relationship better for me. Why don’t you ever ask me?
10. I don’t understand a lot of the messages you send me. Can you make them clearer?
Click through to read the rest of 50 Things Your Customers Wish You Knew and come back here to let us know which one of the 50 resonates most with you and is on your list to change in your customer interactions.
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My favorite:
Telling me what you don’t know makes me trust you.
As much as we want to be the know it alls and provide answers to every beck and call from our clients, the truth is we aren’t and we can’t. It’s important to admit when you don’t know something but at the same time assure the client that you will look into it and learn more. This shows honesty, but a hard work ethic, and in the end both you and the client can learn something new.
So true: My life is really stressful. If you can reduce that stress, you become immensely valuable to me.
Letting prospects and clients know how you can make their lives easier, is critical. We all want to reduce the stress in our lives and when we feel a company’s products or services can do that, we will become loyal customers.
Sarah / Ann:
Thanks for the comments and letting me know which of the 50 points spoke to you. You picked some good ones: building trust and relieving pain points.
It is an awesome post, thanks for passing it along!
#50 is my favourite: “It’s all about me”
We look at the world through a B2B lens but most of your insights apply very well.
I would add “Take the time to understand what your customer wants to know not just what you want to tell them”. It is often the first place to start thinking about your customer and it is inspired by #50.
http://blog.brainrider.com/2010/04/b2b-marketing-how-to-understand-what-you-customer-wants-to-know/
Thanks for sharing.
Scott Armstrong, BrainRider
Scott
Thanks for adding your thoughts to this discussion, and thanks for the link. Social media has really helped companies start to view their customers as people worth engaging with, rather than just an entry on a spread sheet. This change in attitude continues to push companies to view the customer relationship from the customer side.
Jeffrey,
I particularly like the simple recommendation to ask our customers what we can do to improve the relationship. It’s too easy to assume that if we’re committed to understanding the customer’s business and technical challenges and to designing solutions to help solve those challenges that a great partnership is virtually assured.
Separately, I got a Firefox alert that this site possibly contains malware:
http://www.remarkable-communication.com/50-things-your-customers-wish-you-knew/