1. Focus on meeting needs.
Instead of telling customers how great your business and its products are, tell them how you are going to meet their needs. What problem are you solving for them? If you can make someone’s life easier or more pleasant, it will be easy to be viewed as a friend, an entity that the customer has an ongoing relationship with. Make this customer focus a core part of your brand and your marketing. Read more about marketing to the affluent.
2. Make all interactions as pleasant as possible.
Few people can maintain a healthy, ongoing relationship with a person who is difficult to deal with, and business relationships operate in a very similar way. From the way you and your employees answer the telephone to the way you handle returns, all customer interactions should be streamlined and managed in a way that the customer comes out feeling like a winner. As with human relationships, business relationships are developed over time through positive interaction.
3. Create an aesthetically pleasing environment.
Studies have shown over and over that the public prefers attractive people for both personal and business relationships. While aesthetics aren’t everything, they are a huge part of the overall picture. This means that creating clean and attractive spaces, both in physical locations and websites, is a key part of nurturing the customer relationship.
4. Put yourself out there.
