5 Things to Do for Your Clients’ Everlasting Loyalty

Establishing a circle of loyalty between you and your client can take a lot of effort, but focusing on the right factors can make this journey easier and faster. Here you have the main ingredients of a healthy, long-lasting B2B relationship.

1. Display of generous attitude

Being generous with your clients not only proves that you are interested in their business’s growth and their interests, but also touches their heart. That is the key ingredient when any business person decides to stick with a partner even when times are tough. Think about the relationship analogy: the proof of positive feelings must be constant and thoughtful for your bond to last longer and be fruitful.

This attentive attitude can depend on your domain and it involves nothing much than a little bit of proactive thinking or fast reaction. For example, make sure your service or product is easy to use and easy to get a hold on. Your clients have to think about you first and that is simple to achieve if you do something different, like a special discount or a personalized approach.

Another thing you can do is add an extra to your services. Extra helping your clients is a clear evidence that you want a business connection on the long-run and that your partnership is important to you.

2. Take time to learn about their needs

Clients, along with their customers, value quality service more than fast service. Put your knowledge before your working rate. This can insure your business loyal clients that understand the high risk of error during a fast pace of work. A Customer Experience Impact Report from 2011 states that “rude, incompetent and rushed” service was the number 1 cause of dumping a brand or a service. In addition, more than 50% of the customers engaged in a purchase of a product or a service went for the brand with a strong customer service reputation.
That can be easily translated in B2B cases because at the end of the other line is also a person that makes the calls. So, taking that into consideration, you will gain more loyal clients if you take the time to know what they want and how they want it done rather that delivering fast, but faulty.

3. Customize your services

After you get the time to get to know your clients and their needs, you should find a way to comply with them. Don’t worry about your business. You won’t lose money by trying to impress your clients. You will get even more. A Bain & Company survey conducted in 2013 showed that customers are willing to pay 20% more than standard equivalents for customized products and many companies are successfully charging a lot more for personalization.
In addition, your personalized services are going to stand out on the market and increase your positive reputation as a flexible and intuitive business partner.

 Photo source.

 4. Get your brand story out there

When it comes to B2C relationship, a story well told is one of the most persuasive forms of writing or speaking available for a brand. Managing to carry away the customers, even for a little while, is a power that every company can work on and an efficient way to increase loyalty.

In B2B field, your brand story is, actually, your reputation and if it consists in a positive image in the eyes of your business partners and also your employees, you should thrive on it as much as you can. Make sure that your clients know you are trustworthy and tell them beautifully about your business values and mottos. If they believe your story and you prove it’s a true one, they will stick with you for a long time.

5. Be there first

It’s a fact that people get used to services and are reluctant about change when the competition brings no strong differential aspects. If your market is competitive enough but the differences between services or products are not crucial, a key action is to get a new client first. Change in business takes time and resources and if your service meets the needs of your client, be sure that he will stick with you for as long as you keep yourself up to the challenge. An important angle of getting new business is letting your potential client try your service for free for a small period of time, but just enough to get him used with your platform or way of making business.

In the end, there are a lot of variables to take into consideration when trying to raise your clients’ loyalty. The main idea is to focus your efforts on a factor that represents the base of sustainable and healthy growth for your company: the long-term bond between your business and your clients.

How Much Do You Value Data?

There are a lot of managers who don't recognize the data and information that flows through their company as an asset. Entrepreneurs or other managers who think about their assets in terms of human resources, equipment, machines, vehicles, but they never considered data and information as an asset for their company. Of course we are not talking about big enterprises here, most of them are small or medium businesses who never thought of data to be an important factor for their business, companies who never gathered data and they are not afraid to lose it.

Imagine this: a small sales department with 5 to 10 salesmen in a company where every salesman goes to meetings, pitches contacts and makes calls. All the discussions, phone numbers, company names go into employees personal organizers, notebooks. Salesmen come and go, and when they go, they take all the data with them, and when they come, they have to start from the bottom. This is the typical cycle for a lot of companies out there who don't use business software solutions, ERP systems or CRM Applications. What is worse is that they still believe they can work it out the way it is right now, managers who often think that software solutions are too big of a hassle.

Nexus Electronics company, for example, started to use a CRM system for sales since day 1 and just like in any other company or sales department, people come and go, but when sales people go, the information stays in the company's database. We are talking about tens of thousands of contacts who were probably not ready to purchase at first, but every time a  sales person started a new discussion with a lead, they knew everything about the company, who is the decision maker, what discussions other co-workers had with them, what kind of people they are talking to and how to approach them.

For these kind of companies, data is extremely valuable because it actually brings value to the company. Companies who value data will always be one step ahead of the competitors, they can identify needs easier and sales people can come up with a better strategy. We can always stay comfortable, but sometimes we have no idea the performance we can achieve if we step outside of our comfort zone, in this case implementing a CRM solution for the Sales Department.