How Your Biz Can Build Lasting Relationships

How Your Biz Can Build Lasting Relationships

If you want to thrive in an industry with long sales cycles, consider creating long-lasting relationships to create a sustainable business.

Client retention studies show that it costs about 25 times more to get new clients than to retain existing ones. As an additional bonus, your retained clients can refer others to your business when satisfied.

Nevertheless, how do you build these long-lasting relationships in the ever-changing, highly dynamic world?

Be a Good Communicator

Your customers need to know what’s happening. Whether you’re a real estate professional or a loan officer, tell your customers as much as possible and do it proactively, whether it’s about a property or a mortgage.

Remember that there’s not too much communication during an active sales process. Reach out and keep your clients updated on what’s happening, their alternatives, and what you propose they do so they don’t have to seek you down to figure out what’s happening continuously.

Be Open and Sincere

You’ll occasionally encounter some roadblocks. Despite your best efforts, you’ll not always deliver what your clients want. For instance, your client’s finances or credit scores could sometimes cause issues. In other cases, you may experience shipment delays or significant obstacles.

Please be forthright about any setbacks or obstacles you may encounter along the road. It’s preferable to give the bad news to them straight than risk more negative outcomes by delaying. Once you break your clients’ trust, it will be incredibly hard and resource-consuming to win it back.

Have Your Clients Interact with Your Company

From a client’s perspective, nothing beats interacting closely with your brand. When you and your team meet your customers and allow them to see your products live, they’ll feel a stronger connection. Live meet-ups are better than direct emails or phone calls. Thus, plan to meet your clients in person.

Nonetheless, because you already have a lot on your plate—managing finances, asset valuation, and answering capital calls, among other things—planning these meet-ups could be pretty challenging.

That’s why it’s essential to hire private equity fund administrators. You’ll have adequate time to spend with your clients by outsourcing some of these back-office activities to a trusted partner. These partners can simplify your business deals and fund the administration process.

Enrich Their Lives

Fundamentally, if you provide value to the lives of others, they will appreciate you and refer you to others. You are delivering a service, but serving as a guide and offering your industry knowledge can also help them consider you a reliable resource.

Your clients should be aware that they can contact you with any issues about your domain of expertise, even if they are unrelated to the transaction.

Educating the client through creating and distributing helpful, relevant material is an effective method for achieving this goal.

Address their Concerns

Even your most loyal customers will have issues. When they call for help, it is essential to provide the same welcoming, attentive service regardless of the number of times they’ve raised it.

Nevertheless, if a long-term client has an issue, flag the call and address it immediately to prevent losing them.

It is also essential to monitor online mentions of your company and capture client complaints posted on review sites and social media.

Such online criticism could make you lose your current clientele and prevent potential ones from purchasing your goods or products.

Keep in Touch

After ending a certain transaction, you want to make sure that you keep the conversations going. However, this can be challenging since there’s no longer a business deal to discuss. Consider these two ways:

First, keep track of your client’s most important dates and milestones, including birthdays, anniversaries, and closing dates, and reach out with a card, phone call, or personal note.

Second, send them helpful, engaging tips through social media or email. Doing so will remind them of the quality service you deliver and that you’re always on call should they want answers to any questions.

Building and maintaining relationships takes time and resources. However, by following some of these tips, including partnering with a trusted company to outsource back-office functions, you can maintain long-term client relationships. Additionally, you could gain other clients through referrals.

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