Friends are clients and clients are friends : is it sustainable?
A very wise man once said to me, "friends are clients and clients are friends". From that moment it all made sense. If you treat your clients as friends and not another number or addition to your revenue hunt, your relationship will last longer and be more sustainable.
In the modern digital age, it's much simplier to be friends with your clients, particularly if you have hundreds of thousands of them at your fingertips.
They connect with you on social media; facebook, twitter, linkedin, pinterest, myspace - you name it, they are "friends" with you. Each day, I log onto my twitter account and I talk to people I know and some that I don't. The one's that I don't, are new friends. People I am getting to know via twitter. They have shared a common interest or have an opinion on something that I have written that interwines us together. Instantly, we feel like we "get" each other or perhaps that "we don't". Either way, we form a connection and depending on how we interact and communicate we will either become "friends" or fade away into the twittersphere.
In the modern digital age, it's much simplier to be friends with your clients, particularly if you have hundreds of thousands of them at your fingertips.
They connect with you on social media; facebook, twitter, linkedin, pinterest, myspace - you name it, they are "friends" with you. Each day, I log onto my twitter account and I talk to people I know and some that I don't. The one's that I don't, are new friends. People I am getting to know via twitter. They have shared a common interest or have an opinion on something that I have written that interwines us together. Instantly, we feel like we "get" each other or perhaps that "we don't". Either way, we form a connection and depending on how we interact and communicate we will either become "friends" or fade away into the twittersphere.
There is no sure fast way to become friends other than to keep everything genuine. If you are genuine, then people get to know you and if they connect, they really connect. Sometimes sharing a little piece of you personally will help bring a stronger relationship with your "friends" than if you just push out sales and marketing content. I always try to do a bit of both and share as many experiences as possible to connect with clients and prospects on social media and that works particularly well for the business I am in because they feel like they "know me" without ever physically meeting.
Yesterday, I caught up with a client for a glass of wine and to discuss their new website and marketing campaign.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and after running 10 minutes late, I was met with a smiling face. Here we have a client, who is a wonderful person, super smart and insightful, who is happy to share a glass of wine with me on a Sunday afternoon and talk about the activities of the week ahead.
Taking the meeting out of the office and into a Sunday can be quite powerful for many reasons. The first is from both parts, it says to me that we are willing to enjoy a casual conversation mixed with business in our own time - not in work time.
We got through the business side of things and then just "chewed the fat". The conversation was fascinating and gave me insights to him as a person and no doubt the same for him to me.
We walked away more connected as friends than had we just had another meeting Monday to Friday in the office.
Now this meeting was unusual because of travel schedules and deadlines requiring us to meet outside the normal hours, but it is a great example how offline meetings can create a more meaningful client/supplier relationship.
How we got the client in the first place was through social media. If I recall, it was through Linkedin or Twitter. So the relationship started there and now I can safely say, that this client is a friend - not just a connection or a client.
In a business to business environment it is particularly important to create a meaningful relationship with your client or prospect. It may take more time to sustain, but ultimately it will assist in building a better business and more people that champion your brand.
Leave a comment
Make sure you enter all the required information, indicated by an asterisk (*). HTML code is not allowed.
comments ( 3 )
Owen
06 Feb 2013Building a friendship with clients can be both beneficial and inhibiting. It is likely to increase the longevity of the business relationship because both parties are comfortable with each other and have a level of trust for each other. This can also mean that your client will choose you when another supplier may be able to provide a slightly better product.
ReplyOn the other hand, being friends can get in the way of the business. It is likely that, at some point, a business decision will need to be made which will hurt one of these parties. Being friends can complicate this and ultimately hurt either the friendship or the business.
Frederic
03 Jan 2013Hello,
ReplyThank you for this article demonstrating that the management of key relationships is crucial to organizational effectiveness.
The relationship marketing perspective is based on the notion that on top of the value of products and/or services that are exchanged, the existence of a relationship between two parties creates additional value for the customer and also for the supplier or service provider. Companies must move from a short-term transaction-oriented goal to a long-term relationship-building objective, promoting a movement toward a focus on developing value-laden relationships and marketing networks.
Furthermore, the relationship a firm builds with its clients is an asset that may provide enduring competitive strength and ought to involve all employees across traditional boundaries, in building and sustaining customer relationships. The objective of marketing relationships is to develop an in-depth understanding of the needs and changing requirements of clients, then using the enhanced knowledge of the customer, the company can tailor and customize adapted products or services to the customer.
In conclusion, the existence of a market relation is the foundation of exchange not a substitute for it. what marketing deserves are new perspectives where the client indeed is the focal point as suggested in your text. The strategy of management approach is about the establishment of a co-creative environment for further relationship development between customers and companies.
Joshita
17 Nov 2012Great insight into online and offline relationships. Its true that the progression of this technological era and the social media phenomenon, facilitate an otherwise missed opportunity to connect to a variety of peers. However the question remains, can an online relationship prosper into an offline, traditional relationship with all the accompanying bells and whistles of face-to-face interaction and verbal communication? It is one thing to "friend" someone on Facebook or "follow" them on twitter, and another to take the time and effort to sit down and have a conversation away from the keyboard. Its so good to hear people are still willing to venture out into the wild and have an intimate conversation in a comfortable social setting and build a sustainable relationship through social interaction the good old fashion way. Whilst the Internet combats the barriers of time and space, inevitably offline environments will always triumph in successfully maintaining any relationship, personal or business.
Reply