Create Client Loyalty: 3 Strategies to Win Friends and Keep Clients | Extraordinary Business

Create Client Loyalty: 3 Strategies to Win Friends and Keep Clients | Extraordinary Business

As a business leader of a large company, there’s no shortage of responsibilities on your shoulders. This is the way you prefer it — you can maintain oversight to ensure everything is running smoothly. But when it comes to maintaining client relationships, you know you have to let your employees take the lead so every client gets the specialized attention they need to keep their business long term.

To fully ensure your company stands out from the other companies who are competing for your clients’ business, relationship management requires a more personalized approach. Here are three strategies you and your team can use to help build stronger, longer-lasting client relationships.

Let Your Business Guide Your Approach

A strategy that works well for one type of business may not work for another. Your business vertical and target audience should be a key consideration when determining a unique and effective approach for building genuine relationships.

For example, if you have a law firm that specializes in estate planning or an insurance brokerage, you’re likely aware when a client’s loved one passes away. This can be a great opportunity to show that you care about your client on a personal level and that you think of clients as more than just an income stream. Show this by sending a handwritten sympathy card and a bouquet of flowers from FTD.

Celebrate Life’s Milestones

When working with a client, you often get little glimpses into their personal lives. Nurture this bond by celebrating some of life’s most precious milestones — like engagement, marriage or the birth of a child.

To celebrate your client’s engagement, offer to take him or her out for happy hour after work or send a nice bottle of champagne to their office. When a client gets married or has a baby, find his or her gift registry online (most big stores — like Target or Baby’s R Us have registries you can check out) and order something special you know they want. Gifts for milestone events like these often carry a lot of sentimentality, further cementing your bond with your client.

Identify Common Interests

It is basic human nature to like people who show interest in you. Use this principle to your advantage by maintaining a healthy curiosity about your clients, which will help you get to know them better. Identify any areas of common interest that you share and use these interests to come up with creative ways to treat your client to a special afternoon or night out.

If you love the same band and they are playing a show in your town, invite your client to go. Or if you are both huge fans of your city’s basketball team, splurge on a pair of courtside seats and have your client go with you after work. Find tickets online from a site like StubHub. Maybe you both love Korean food and there’s a new restaurant in town that you could try together for happy hour. Whatever activity you choose, by tailoring it to your client’s interests, you can make him or her feel special, naturally increasing loyalty to your company.

Rick Meekins is the Managing Consultant at Aepiphanni, a Business Consultancy that provides Management Consulting, Implementation and Managed Services to business leaders and entrepreneurs seeking to improve or expand operations. We are the trusted advisor to those seeking forward-thinking operational and strategic solutions to help them plan for and navigate through the challenges of business growth.

Our entrepreneurial multidisciplinary team works with clients to develop differentiating solutions and provide direction focused on lasting, strategic results.  We exist to help our clients CREATE | DESIGN | BUILD extraordinary businesses.

We would love to hear from you.  Please share your thoughts and comments below. If you are seeking advice on how to grow your business, streamline systems and processes, implement software or overcoming challenges to growth, please contact us, directly or submit a request for a complimentary Coffee & a Consult to learn how we can help you CREATE | DESIGN | BUILD an Extraordinary Company.

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