Client Management as a Business Survival Strategy

Relationship management is an important part of any business and knowing your industry’s priorities is an essential part of demonstrating your value to prospects and building relationships. Whether you run a large company or a small entity that knows all its customers by name, great relationship management skills will always set you apart from your competitors and help in the retention of customers. If knowing your customers’ needs is not part of your DNA, such a business will struggle to attract the customers’ attention.

Organisations spend so much effort into acquiring clients, but very few spend the same energy nurturing the existing relationships. The key to business success is not just in the winning, but also in keeping the customers. Relationships are the heart of any business success and prioritising these relationships is most important for business survival. To survive in a competitive business environment, the steps below should be adhered to in managing client relationships:

Respect for time – Time is the most precious and finite resource you and your clients have. If you want to build healthier relationships, you must respect their time. Open yourself up to clients and allow them to schedule appointments with you. Recognise appropriate time for talk shop.

Get face to face – Put a call across to the client whenever anything goes wrong. Email does not always translate circumstances or feelings. Your clients place value on phone calls.

Under promise and over deliver – Do not put yourself in a situation where you will let a client down. Analyse the client’s expectations and be conservative in the promising of the delivery timeline.

Do not burn the bridge with pettiness – Being petty can cost you a relationship with a client. Be willing to lose the battle to win the war. Return their missed phone calls, Follow-up with their referrals, apologise if you miss an appointment from a client. These are very important in relationship management.

Set mutual goals – Organisations should ensure that a mutual goal is set and agreed at the commencement of every engagement. This is to ensure that both the organisation and client are on the same page at every discussion.

Be transparent – Organisations should not try to be a polished version of themselves when having negotiations with the client. Be real and realistic.

Build credibility – Be consistent and systematic in dealing with your clients. Focus on slowly building credibility with your conversations and engagement deliverables. This conscious precision will earn you a healthy client relationship defined by trust.

In conclusion, to push your business to the next level, you must start prioritising client relationships over non-important things. Customer service and relationship management are not limited to keeping customers interested in doing business with you, but in forming relationships that allow the business to evolve alongside its customers.