Relationship Marketing

The selling process never ends! In fact, your relationship with a sales prospect, who is now your customer, should continue to grow.

It's far less expensive to cultivate your existing customer base and sell more services to them than it is to seek new, single-transaction customers. Focusing on customer needs, through relationship marketing, is a proven method to keep the sales rolling in. You'll need to continue to seek new customers, of course. Just don't overlook the untapped potential of your existing ones!

Relationship marketing also increases the return on your sales investment. (Even if all you had put into previous sales efforts was time, that's valuable too!) When you sell an additional product to an existing customer, you don't have to repeat preliminary steps such as prospecting, rapport-building and information gathering because you're working upon a foundation that's already been laid. So, repeat sales are less expensive to obtain than new sales.

Follow these tips for relationship marketing:

• Listen to customers. They'll tell you what they need from you if you'll just take the time to listen and make them feel comfortable.

• If they don't volunteer information, ask questions to uncover their problems and needs. Then, focus on solving problems or meeting needs rather than selling them another product. They'll appreciate your interest and you will, most likely, make a sale in the long run. And, even if you don't make an additional sale, customers may refer you to someone else based on the excellent service you've provided them.

• Be honest. Don't try to sell something that's not needed. Likewise, if you can't fulfill particular customer needs, tell them, and try to help them find someone who will. Your helpfulness will be long remembered and those customers are more likely to come back to you when they need your type of product or service again.

One relationship-building tactic is to "get in front of your customers" through the mail. You might want to send the following:

• Thank you notes for orders, referrals or continued business.
• Short notes about positive meetings or phone calls.
• A newspaper or magazine article about a customer's business.
• Articles or information about a customer's competition.
• An announcement of your new product or service. (Don't forget to focus on its benefits.)
• A notice of a special sale or offer. Include coupons for customer discounts or invite customers to special "pre-sale" days.
• A newsletter from your company. Include beneficial tips and information for your customers.
• A hot lead. (Your customers are in business to make sales, too!)
• A notice of a meeting or seminar of interest.
• A reminder of a pending order or reorder. (You just might help them avoid a costly lack of inventory.)

And finally, a few tips on correspondence to prospects and customers:

• Get to the point in the first sentence and limit letters to one page.
• Use personal, hand-written notes when possible.
• Use a P.S; it's always read.
• Spell correctly.
• In thank-you notes, don't thank more than once. You could close with, "Thank you again for your business." Once is enough.

The Online Women's Business Center thanks Dianne Ogle, owner of Marketing Makes It! for her contribution to the above article.

Provided by the Small Business Association, http://www.onlinewbc.gov/docs/market/mk_sales_rltshpmkt.html