How To Build Effective Partnership with Clients | Sales Leadership Strategy
Want to build the most profitable relationship with your client? Try focusing on their profits first. When you focus on achieving client profitability, you create business relationships that are synergetic, whereby the whole is greater than the sum of its separate parts. A true partnership creates an equation where one-plus-one equals more than two. So, you have a choice to go it alone or partner with your clients.
Key to Partnering
How can we build the most effective partnerships with clients? Here are five keys to building the most effective partnerships with clients:
Show your clients that you care about their success, not just the most recent transaction. Successful partners never miss an opportunity to build the client’s business, to help with the client’s customers, and to solve the client’s problems. Profit-focused professionals are more than order takers or transaction sellers. They have a completely different focus on the relationship. You will realize that the client’s success will improve your success.
Ask more than you tell. Telling can put clients in a defensive posture quickly. Always be respectful of your client by guiding with good questions to ensure that you and the client are communicating before you give advice. Of course, the client wants your advice, but you will be more effective if you lead with questions. Implicit in the idea of asking is the concept of listening to what is said, not just hearing. You want to listen to the words and the meaning. To get the meaning, you must listen with your eyes and your heart, because the meaning is transmitted from the emotion, not the words.
Clearly establish roles and goals. In successful partnerships, each partner fulfills his role with reliability. If it is possible to be misunderstood, you will be. Therefore, you must clarify who will do what by when. Put everything you can in writing, so each party has a good record. And finally, make no promises you can’t keep.
Be flexible. You have a standard approach to your practice, with standard systems and contracts. However, your partner may want one that is not cookie cutter. One of the keys to an effective partnership is to fashion a relationship that is, of itself, unique.
Communicate regularly and thoroughly. Call your client-partner regularly, not just when you need business. Call and visit on some periodic basis to communicate the nuances of the business partnership. If you only communicate around the business transaction, you will be relegated to vendor status. If you want to be a partner, communicate, communicate, and communicate.
Conclusion
When you focus on client profits, you both get the benefit of advisor status, plus you become more indispensable and obtain more repeat business.
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