It Is All About Relationships with your Team and Clients

By Brad Sugars on Mar-25-2008 | Subscribe

Your business will be as successful as your Team allows it to be (unless you want to do all the work for all your customers). With that in mind, what is your relationship like with your team?

Ask yourself the following:

Do I know much about them?
Do I encourage their development?
Do I have a training program in place?
Do I encourage them to take small risks and grow? If you want to have people feel the same passion about your business as you do, you need to foster and nurture your relationship with them.

The other important relationship that we need to focus on is with the customer. If you look at why customers stop working with you, the statistics are amazing:

Death and other: (One percent)
Move: (Three percent)
Sold by Competitor:(Nine percent)
Product/Price: (14 percent)
Perceived Indifference: (68 percent)

That's right - 68 percent of your customers move on to other suppliers because they do not think you appreciate their business. That number is unbelievable - especially when you consider the acquisition cost of a new client. How many times does a customer have to buy from you in order for your business to make a profit (once you have included advertising, etc.)? If you don't know, you should.

What are you doing today to make sure that your "A" and "B" grade customers know that you appreciate their business?

Taking control of the hardest part; your thoughts...

There are many external challenges when owning a business - the market, new competitors, changing customers, managing cashflow, etc. When talking with owners, we find that one thing that they can control, but do not, is the space between their ears.

In different terms, what happens when someone thinks the following?

At a green light when you think please don't turn red what happens? It turns red.
When a football team puts in the prevent defense, what happens? It prevents them from winning.
When a salesperson thinks about a prospect and hopes they don't buy from someone else, what happens? The prospect buys elsewhere.
When a player is shooting a free throw and is focused on not missing, what happens? They miss.

Controlling the thoughts that you have is the first step to controlling your success. Instead of focusing on what you don't want to happen, focus on what you do want to happen. It works for my seven year old and will work for you.