Establishing a relationship: The basics

Building relationships with your customers isn’t as difficult as you may think.

You simply have to treat your customers as if they truly are your strategic

partners. You also need to show them that you truly care about them. You

can do both of these things by focusing your efforts on developing and exem-

plifying the following qualities:

 ✓ Expertise: Be able to answer the questions that your customers have.

Consumers don’t want to buy from just anyone — they want to know

that they can count on you to give them good solid advice and feedback.

 ✓ Attention: Pay attention to your customers; listen to what they want and

what they have to say. By listening to what they say, you can identify

their needs and hopefully provide a solution for those needs.

 ✓ Friendliness: Reflect a great attitude. Customers are attracted to busi-

nesses that contain happy and helpful people. Be sure to hire those staff

members who can exude friendliness to your customers.

 ✓ Flexibility: Be flexible in order to fulfill the needs of your customers. If

customers think that doing business with you is a risk, they’ll reach out

to your competitors.

 ✓ Patience: Customers don’t like being pressured to purchase, so show

them options and educate them, but then be patient while they make a

decision.

 ✓ Superiority: Offer products that are of excellent quality. Do what you do,

and do it well. Be superior in both products and service. Customers hate

to feel like they were scammed or taken advantage of. When purchas-

ing from you, they want to be confident that you will provide them with

quality products and will back those products with superior service

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