Valentine's Day is the perfect day to offer a heartfelt message about winning the hearts and minds of clients. I prepared a light-hearted post on this special day to show readers how much I care.
What happens next? Instead of offering champagne or flowers, I shared methods for showing your clients that you are grateful for their patronage. Everyone wants to be appreciated, which becomes a deciding factor for clients who decide how to spend their budget. It is important to take your business relationship seriously. Regularly communicating about a client’s success will only reinforce your connection.
Source: etsy.com via Julianne Davis on Pinterest
The following are six little ways to strengthen your client connection.
1. Seek to understand and respect your client.
The more you seek to understand and respect your client will help you and your firm provide services that meet their needs. Also, understanding “who” tends to engage your firm’s services will help identify the most attractive prospects. Understanding your prospective clients and clients will lead to creative strategies for communicating with them.
2. Listen to your client.
It is essential to ask clients what is on their minds and listen to what they say. Create a framework for collecting information from your clients, including:
- Questionnaires,
- Focus Groups, and
- Debrief interviews.
3. Respond to your client.
Once you have a framework for collecting information from your clients, it is important to decide how to respond to clients and take the proper actions at the appropriate times. A good way to measure your ability to respond to a client’s needs successfully is to measure the rate of reoccurring clientele, prospect awareness, client satisfaction, and quality and amount of client information collected.
4. Offer clients food for thought.
The way to a client’s heart is by serving them with valuable information that gives them food for thought. Understanding, listening, and responding is a continuous process that should be combined with an effort to deliver thoughtful, targeted content. Consistently provide helpful tips in an email or blog post. Also, provide timely and relevant communication to clients looking for your services shortly by adding them to a well-honed automated marketing campaign.
5. Keep your client relationship fresh by holding a special “VIP” event.
Let your clients know they are valuable and that you appreciate their business by holding a special event in their honor. A VIP event requires a little planning. I would say that a thoughtful email written to invite clients is essential. If you’d like to open the event to all your industry connections, send notice of this special event through your social media channels.
6. Reward clients.
Reward clients with a complimentary guide, industry report, or professional services consultation as a gesture that says “thank you.” These rewards can be targeted and delivered in email messages that can be a part of a greater client recognition marketing campaign.
These actions need to be a reoccurring business development practice. Simple actions of appreciation combined with inbound marketing methods incorporating email, blog posts, and complimentary content are effective communication tools for sending messages consistently. The most important area to factor into these communications is sincerity. Clients will know if these messages are not coming from the heart. Some final things to keep in mind include the following:
- Always give your clients something valuable in all of your inbound marketing activities.
- Please always have an open door policy with communication by including easy ways to contact you and provide feedback. They need to know you are around to listen when they have challenges and when your firm has surpassed expectations.
- When you promise a client, could you ensure you and your firm back up that promise?
I want you to know that clients need to know you care. Business requires an ability to nurture relationships. Your clients want more than just your professional services; they want to know you are looking out for them. Repeating these six actions will always bring them back to you and your business.
