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Sustaining business relationships

By David Adeoye
05 August 2018   |   3:24 am
Business relational skill is a great asset in business. During recession customers tend to over-react and get frustrated over the increase in prices and economic instability. Businesses pack up due to little or no patronage. Business relationships also crumble.

Pastor David Adeoye

Business relational skill is a great asset in business. During recession customers tend to over-react and get frustrated over the increase in prices and economic instability. Businesses pack up due to little or no patronage. Business relationships also crumble.

This is the time Customer Relationship Management (CRM) must be taken seriously by those who wants to remain relevant. This is not the time to make sales, but to build lasting business relationships with your clients. This is also the time to go the extra mile to keep customers, as well as, maintaining good relationships with existing customers, while hunting for new ones.

How To Sustain Business Relationships
• Keep Your Customers Database
You need to learn how to keep a good database of your customers’ information. Even their personal information such as: names, contacts, date of birth, wedding anniversary, etc. When a customer receives a birthday message or wedding anniversary message from your company, it says a lot about you. This makes customers believe that you care for them.

Every human being gravitates towards where they enjoy care and honour. Business people that are good in this kind of practice hardly lack patronage from both new and existing customers. How do you feel anytime your Bank sends you messages during special holidays, birthday and anniversaries? Whenever Christmas and New Year celebrations are approaching, do you have plans to show your clients that you’re grateful? Or are you considering the cost over the benefits? If you can’t do greeting cards, souvenirs, calendars or hampers, at least send sms or call to say, “Thank you.” Things like this tighten business relationships with your customers. A gift opens business doors and keeps them open.

“A gift gets attention; it buys the attention of eminent people,” Prov.18:16 MSG.
• Be Customer-focus Than Profit-focus
You have to be more customer-focus than profit-focus. There’s no other time to be more customer-focus than a time like this when most customers are upset due to recession. You have to let business relationship supersede reward.This is the time you have to be more focus on your customers’ budgets than your price. You have to be as flexible as possible when it comes to pricing and work within your customers’ budgets.“Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves,” Phil.2:3 CEB

• Check up on your Customers
Develop the policy of staying regularly in contact with your customers and potential customers. You have to use a lot of wisdom to do this without becoming disturbing to them. Do all you can to reach out to customers you haven’t seen in a while. Try to build bridges, and not burn them. Just like King Solomon sent peace letters to most of his Father’s enemies, as soon as he took over the throne. I believe this was why he was able to build the Temple, his Father couldn’t build. King David’s time was full of wars, so there was no time for him to build.

• Consciously build trust with your customers
You need to commit to building trust in your business relationships.Trust determines the longevity of any business relationship. Once customers know how reliable you are, they will not stop coming back to you. Customers tend to settle more with you, if they see you as someone that is knowledgeable enough about your Business.

• Share relevant information with your customers about the product
Royalty Christian Centre; Wisdom Arena, 1, Williams Estate, Opposite Vetland Grammar School, Agege, Lagos. 07082083554, 09090840593. Email: info@davidadeoye.org
You need to learn how to share relevant information about your product that is useful to your customers and potential customers. You’ll be the first they will call when they are in need of your kind of products/services. Customers will not know how much you know about your field of business until you start sharing it with them.I pray God gives you the power to build and sustain business relationships.Royalty Christian Centre; Wisdom Arena, 1, Williams Estate, Opposite Vetland Grammar School, Agege, Lagos. 07082083554, 09090840593. Email: info@davidadeoye.org

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