I had an interesting conversation recently about relationship marketing with the CEO of a company I consult for. I am helping them with acquisition marketing but during this chat I suggested they consider a relationship marketing program to support the sales force. He asked me why I thought this was a good idea. We talked about hunters and farmers.
Sales people are hunters. Good sales people are very focused on the hunt. They relish the kill. That’s what makes them good at what they do. But, this single minded focus on hunting means current customers are often ignored. And current customers are keeping the lights on. Every company needs some farmers to mind the fields, and keep the crops healthy and strong.
Back to my client for a second. As our conversation progressed he commented that an early customer had languished because of a lack of attention and now they needed to start from scratch. This is expensive and unnecessary. A simple relationship marketing program can go a long way toward balancing the efforts of the hunters on your team.
Consider the 5 Relationship Marketing Principles:
- Attract the right customers for the right reasons
- The most crucial time is the beginning
- In established relationships continually reinforce the decision to buy
- Good customers expect to be rewarded
- The second most crucial time is when the relationship is at risk
And build a relationship marketing program for your company. It can be as simple as monthly emails, a quarterly newsletter or a complex data driven program, depending on your needs and size, but you should have somethings.
Hip Shots
- Say thank you to new custmers. Reinforce that they have made a great decision choosing you.
- Communicate with your customers regularly. Tell them about advancements you’ve made. Talk about how your products and services have helped other customers. Tell them about your new customers.
- Build a customer section on your website and use it to provide exclusive information.
- Determine who your best customers are and call or visit them. Radical I know but it’s also easy to do, doesn’t cost much and is really appreciated.
- And be there when something goes wrong, be there to take care of it, especially for your best customers. Your customer service department can be a profit center if it’s part of your relationship marketing strategy.
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Great, practical application steps.
I’ve also thought of marketing as farming, such as preparing the land to attract healthy prospects and then the hunters come in and scoop up the best of the bunch.
And I had a salesperson who once brought me on a call with him and said, “This is Scott, my Sales Manager. I brought him here for the kill!” I quickly assured everyone, that there would be no bloodshed, just the opposite, we were here to help stop the bleeding and fix some of their marketing & advertising problems!
Wonderful, especially the 5 Relationship Principles and the Hip Shots – can really relate to them in the network market business in which I am involved or businesses now as I do 2. Customer’s are So important as without them we would be nothing – even a company that thrives in a recession and has 32 yrs continual growth would no longer be able to say that or be debt free if it ignored its customers.