How to Build Better Relationships with Customers
Build Stronger Relationships Photo by Charles Deluvio
When you run a custom manufacturing shop, you are providing a service to your customers, which means they are more than just a quick sale. If they’re a great customer, you hope to work with them long-term.
Well, how have you built long-term relationships in your personal life? If you’re married, you know that you have to nurture that connection with your partner in order to keep it intact and continue growing deeper roots. Or if you have a best friend or siblings you’re close with, you probably make an effort to reach out to them every so often–and not just when you need something.
Strong relationships require consistent care and attention, and clear, honest communication. This is a fact of life and it’s just as important for your business ties as it is with your parents, kids, friends, or whomever you decide you want to keep around for the long haul. Don’t worry though, these are skills that can be learned over time with sustained practice and effort.
The following tips will go a long way to improve your communication with customers and prospects, and in turn, will help you create solid business relationships.
Get to Know Them
You will form a much healthier bond with a customer if you take the time to get acquainted with them. Customers are people first. They are complex, emotional, fallible humans just like the rest of us, and the more you can connect with them on that level, the stronger your business dealings will be.
Keep a log of your customers and write down the little details they drop during your conversations and show that you care by asking about their life. In the era of social media, it never hurts to do a little stalking either, and it’s a great practice to connect with them on Linkedin or Facebook if they’re active users.
Find out why and how they got into the business they’re in. Ask about their job and what they love and loathe about it. Understand what they deem most important to them and to their company. Pay attention to their conversation style and even ask them how they prefer to stay in touch, and how often.
These little things add up to help you communicate in a way that addresses their needs and pain points. This will help you build an emotional connection, which is what will truly solidify your bond with them.
Dig Beneath the Surface
When a new customer submits an RFQ, don’t just take their files, slap together a time and materials quote, and email it back to them. Pick up the phone and call them to get a better understanding of their big-picture goals for the project. Even if it’s a seemingly simple part. Why? There are a few reasons.
For one, this creates another opportunity to form a connection with them, which makes you more memorable. I can almost guarantee that none of the other suppliers they sent the RFQ to will call to get more information. You may think that they’re probably busy and don’t want to take the time to talk to you, but that’s usually not the case.
The bigger reason is that following up allows you to show your expertise and raise any red flags before the customer wastes their time and money–and yours! Maybe you know of a better way to make the thing because you have way more hands-on experience. Or maybe they are in the early design and prototyping phases and you can come up with a solution that never would have occurred to them otherwise. Then, since you’re already tuned into the project, they might offer you additional pieces of it down the line without even getting quotes from other suppliers.
This is how you position yourself as an expert instead of a commodity. You’re no longer competing with other service providers on price because you’re bringing something new and valuable to the table.
Take the Lead
That old saying, “the customer is always right” is just not true when it comes to providing a custom manufacturing service. You are the expert and they are coming to you to get their problem solved, so act like it. You wouldn’t tell your cruise ship captain which route to take when you leave port, would you? Of course not! You paid a lot of money to let someone else take care of the details and make sure you have a great trip. The same concept applies here. You need to show your customer that you are taking care of them.
How do you do that? By taking the lead from the beginning. You should have a firm standardized procedure that you take each customer through when they first make contact. If they try to get around your process, stand your ground and bring them back in. The more seriously you take your process, the more seriously they will take you.
This will probably be difficult at first and might make you feel arrogant, but your customer will thank you for it and trust you more going forward. Don’t be rude about it, obviously. Just explain why it’s beneficial to them to follow your lead and give an example of how it saved the day for another customer.
Get Ahead of the Hurdles
Have you ever rushed to the airport to be there for early boarding only to find out your flight was delayed? And just to add to your frustration, none of the airport personnel can tell you what’s going on or when you might be taking off. Don’t put your customer in this situation. Especially if the project is complex with a long lead time, your customer will appreciate getting regular status updates without having to hound you.
If you never reach out to them after receiving the PO, they may worry about how it’s going. Take initiative and schedule regular check-in meetings for the duration of the project. When you meet, give them a status update, be ready to answer their questions, and ask if they have any additional needs you can address. And if you run into issues with their project, be proactive! Let them know what’s going on and what you’re doing to correct the situation.
I once had a customer order a few hundred parts to be machined out of a material that could only be cast–despite our machinist’s warning that it wouldn’t work. When the cast blocks came in for machining, they looked like swiss cheese. The foundry had already put us behind schedule and then we had to go back to them to try to work out a solution, which set us even further back. But because I kept our customer in the loop every step of the way, even though we were way late, he thanked me for my superior management of a project that was doomed from the start.
Getting ahead of problems and being proactive with your communications will show that you care and make them feel valued.
Do What You Say You’ll Do
This one should be obvious, but you never want to over-promise and under-deliver if you want to build a long-term relationship with a customer. It’s easy when you’re selling a project to make promises in order to win the job, but if you can’t deliver on them, it’s not worth it. You will only be setting yourself up for failure.
The reverse can be true too. If you always exceed expectations, they will always expect you to, which can also set you up to fail. If you under-promise and over-deliver in the beginning to impress them and then go back into delivering exactly what you promised, they’ll feel like you don’t care about them as much anymore.
When you don’t meet the exact expectations that you set in the beginning, you will quickly lose trust with your customer. They’ll either think you’re untrustworthy and unqualified or that you’re losing interest–no one wants any of that! Always set clear and realistic expectations from the beginning, even if that means admitting that part of the project is out of your wheelhouse.
Every interaction with a prospect, customer, candidate, or anyone else you interact with on a regular basis, is an opportunity to show that you care and that you are as good as your word.
Here’s a quick recap on building better relationships:
Get to know customers on a personal level.
Dig beneath the surface to show expertise and avoid problems.
Take the lead on projects–YOU are the expert.
Be proactive and get ahead of the hurdles.
Do exactly what you say you’ll do.