Why Relationships Are Important to Business Growth

 

All business owners and managers should know why relationships matter for business growth. You can realize much faster sales growth and help your prospects to move faster through the sales funnels if you remember to nurture a positive relationship.

Why Business Relationships Matter

The human factor is much more important for sales and business growth than what many believe. This is particularly true if you are in a highly competitive niche and vying with others for greater market share using similar products and services. The truth is that competition is everywhere and is absolutely inescapable. There are many others who may be offering very similar goods and services as you are. In fact, they may be providing better quality and a wider range of goods and services. In such a case, how can you prevail upon prospects to buy from you rather than others?

Under such circumstances, you have to increase your visibility and bring your brand to life if you want prospects to take notice of your brand. The ultra-competitive environment means that more and more businesses are vying for the attention of fewer prospects. Customers are dazed by the profusion of brands and have a hard time deciding between them. Also, customers are increasingly skeptical and wary of approaching brands that they do not know about.

How Relationship Building Helps

The only way to resolve these issues is to take the initiative and reach out to your prospects proactively to nurture an enduring relationship. Fostering a meaningful relationship of trust is the key for surviving the competition and helping your brand to grow bigger. Building up a relationship and subsequent human interaction will positively influence prospects to buy from you instead of other. It will also help you to convert prospects into long-term recurring customers. Encouraging strong customer relationships is the best way to grow your customer base and build up your credibility.

Reaching out to prospects through the telephone, engaging with them and interacting in real-time to answer their questions and resolve their problems are much more useful than putting up ads or firing away torrents of emails. The human touch has a much greater impact on your customers and it will increase their eagerness and willingness to do business with you. With real-time interaction, your brand springs to life. Your brand can stand out from the sea of competition and gain the undivided attention of your prospects. By talking to customers on the phone, you are greatly narrowing down their list of choices. By providing relevant answers to their most pressing questions you are making your brand the number one candidate for your prospects. This way, you can narrow down their list of choices to basically your own brand. A friendly, polite and professional tone can go a long way in influencing your prospect to deal with you in lieu of other brands.

Why Customers Prefer Relationships

Our human instinct is such that we are more trusting of brands with the human touch. People are naturally averse to dealing with brands that are faceless and voiceless. Customers want to deal with real people rather than faceless brands that look much the same as a gazillion other brands in the market. Giving your brand a voice, talking to consumers and giving them useful suggestions is much more likely to attract prospects to your business and build trust. As human beings we value social interaction and put a high value on the same even for business.

Proactive interaction and relationship building is particularly useful for growing your list of recurring customers. If you want lifelong customers then paying attention to relationship building is an absolute must. You can avoid customer turnover by nurturing a solid relationship with your customers.

Increasingly demanding customers need much more than just timely services and high-quality products. They also seek human interaction since it is fundamental to our nature. Building relationships can be a boon in the highly competitive milieu. Customers often shop around from different brands to find out which one is the best choice for them. If you provide great customer service and emphasize on building an amicable relationship with your customers then they will feel both prized and delighted. Building relationships sends out a powerful message to your customers. It helps your customers to realize that they are extremely valuable in your sight and that you are more than willing to go the extra mile to please them. Human beings are naturally drawn to those who can boost their self-esteem and make them feel great. That’s what relationship building can do for your brand and your customers.

If you give your customers the attention and respect that they seek through relationship building then they will have no need to go to anyone else. They will become your customers for life knowing that you value them greatly and are more than eager to delight them any way you can.

Building Relationships with Email?

One important issue to understand is that relationship building is not possible through emails or ads. Emails have a very low success rate as evidenced by the strong opposition to unwanted emails. In fact, sending out unsolicited emails is an effective way of eroding trust and rapport since people avoid spam with a vengeance.

Even if it is a warm prospect, there are many reasons why emails just won’t do. Emails are impersonal and much more likely to be ignored. Unlike talking over the phone, emails do not allow you to interact in real-time. In fact, there is hardly any room for interaction through dull and dry text that is thoroughly bereft of the richness of the human voice. Emails are devoid of the human touch and thus fail to create any impact at all.

A key aspect to winning over prospects is to make them feel valued. This is another front where emails fall short. Recipients are well aware that the same emails have gone out to thousands of other prospects. Nobody is thrilled about receiving automated mass mailed messages. Mass mailing means that you are not providing undivided attention to your prospect. That is unfortunate since this is something that people crave the most. Everyone appreciates receiving attention and being heard. But talking to your prospects and listening to them is simply not possible through email. This medium lacks real-time social engagement which is so crucial for building relationships and winning over people.

Emails are now synonymous with ‘spam.’ This presumption is not unfounded since around half of all emails are spam. Hence, emails have a very negative connotation and will hardly help with relationship building. Building bridges is not possible if people frantically seek to distance themselves from the very medium through which you want to build bridges. There is no point in sending emails when people won’t even open them in the first place. Thus emails send bad vibes, convey a poor impression and lack the human touch which is vital for building trust.

People have an innate tendency to ignore emails and ads. The very sight of an unsolicited email will have them reach out for the ‘report as spam’ button. People don’t even bother to read emails that they have subscribed for.

Business Relationships the Right Way

But when you place phone calls to warm leads (prospects interested in the goods and services you are offering), they are much more willing to listen. The key to this attention lies in the fact we inherently take people much more seriously than mass emails. Through outbound phone calls, you can gain the undivided attention and focus of your prospects for a few seconds. This is enough time to create a lasting impact on your future clients. Even if they excuse themselves when busy, they will still think about you later on when they want to buy the goods and services that you mentioned in your call. They are much more likely to think about your brand when shopping around for the said goods and services since your brand stood out from the competition through human interaction. They don’t see your brand in the same way as they see other businesses of the same kind. After a warm and friendly phone call, your brand ceases to be another business out of the sea of anonymous, faceless and voiceless businesses.

People may forget about facts and figures, but they seldom forget how you made them feel. In other words, if you make them feel good they are highly likely to remember that for emotions are hard to forget. And that is what you can exactly do through a smart and well planned phone call. You can address their business concerns and propose a solution. This is very helpful for building a relationship since people give a high priority to avoiding problems that can cost them later on. You can show your willingness to help by suggesting relevant solutions. This will make your interaction seem more like assistance rather than sales talk. People appreciate help for their most pressing problems. So you can send the right signal by focusing on their problem and suggesting possible solutions for the same. Such an approach can help you to build trust and credibility.

Win Over Prospects Through a Personalized Approach

Outbound phone calls really shine thanks to real-time interaction. Whereas, skeptical prospects are very likely to dismiss emails as just another sales message, things are very different with outbound calls. Skeptical prospects have the luxury of having their most pressing questions answered there and then. You can answer their questions as they come to sustain and build up interest. Before placing a phone call, you can make up a list of common questions and work out the most effective answers. Thus you can dispel any misconceptions that they may have. This will help you to foster trust and credibility – ingredients that are paramount for strong relationships and good business.

Via instant answers, you create a positive impression, win the confidence of your prospects and even strike up amicable relationship that will further influence their decision to buy from you. Even politeness and friendly gestures can go a long way in winning over hearts and minds.

The advent of mega corporations has made relationship building more important than ever before. You might think that it is hard to compete with the biggest businesses but there is still a lot of hope. Big corporations tend to be highly impersonal and cold in their approach. This is something that can put off customers even if goods and services offered are above par. You can capitalize on this opportunity by lavishing personal attention on your customers. Doing so will make them feel extremely welcome and provide them with much-needed personal warmth that they could not find in big corporations.

Thus, your brand can compete with the most powerful businesses if you capitalize on building relationships with new prospects and existing customers.

Relationships for Bringing Back Customers

In addition to new prospects, you can also prevail upon previous customers to buy from you. For instance, suppose you are running a sales promotion. Your first priority should be to talk on the phone with your previous customers and cordially invite them to your sales promotion. A personal approach like this is much more effective than placing ads, distributing flyers and mass emails. There is such a plethora of promotions out there that people perceive it as mere noise. Hence, emails and ads are not terribly effective. But if you talk in person and build up a relationship then people may take a very different approach to your sales promotion. The human touch will induce them to pay attention and respond positively.

Having mentioned the numerous advantages of relationship building, there is one important fact to bear in mind. Relationship building requires a lot of hard work, time, and energy. It also requires tried and tested techniques to make a positive impact. Paying attention to relationship building will certainly put a much greater strain on you.

Hence, it is better to outsource this critical business function to the experts who know it all. Our marketing professionals have the knowledge, experience, and prowess to make relationship-building work for you.

Want to know how Gen Leads outbounding marketing services can help your business grow and nurture its outsourced business relationships? Be sure to contact us today to find out more.

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