What's the Key to Developing Successful Customer Relationships?

By Kristina Evey

Develop and Strengthen Your Customer Satisfaction Through Relationships

What is the best way to develop relationships?

By spending time with those you want relationships with. Find out what is important to them. Discover what their goals, needs, and desires are. Keeping in touch with those that are important to us.

We can use this basic relationship premise in the world of our business relationships as well.

Your customers are not buying your product or service.... they are buying the relationship with you.

Let's use the example of health clubs. With health and fitness being so much more mainstream today than ever before, it is an absolute guarantee that customers want to be in an environment where they feel truly understood by those that are helping them.

Determine the goals of the goals of your customers. In the example of gyms, find out what is driving them to use you. Is it to reduce their blood pressure? To lose weight? To get in shape for summer? To increase their strength? By accurately understanding the reason why someone is using your services, then you can provide them with exactly what they are looking for.

Once you know what your customers is looking for, go out of your way to give it to them. In our health club example, provide them with the training necessary to achieve their goals. If their goal is to lose weight or reduce blood pressure, provide access to a nutritionist to make improvements in their diet combined with exercise. For those that are looking to increase fitness or increase strength, give them a training session to customize exercises tailored specifically for them.

Business relationships should continue long after the initial product or service has been purchased. We keep our personal relationships alive by seeing each other, calling and writing each other. Carry this through in your customer relationships. Ask your health club members how they are doing in the achievement of their goals. Determine if they need more or different services. Ask them what they like about your services and if they would like to see anything changed.

Keeping relationships open and honest will bring fulfillment in our personal lives, and profitable in our professional lives. By forming genuine relationships with your customers, they will feel valued by you and be willing to continue to spend their money with you over your competitors that don't appreciate them.

And now I would like to send you my free audio download of my recent teleseminar "Promoting Customer Service in Your Company". It will be sent to you by email when you visit http://www.CustomerCentricTraining.com

Discover WHY it is so important to Promote Customer Service and HOW your bottom line will benefit ...

Helping you focus on your customers- Kristina Evey

Be sure to check back to my site for the latest blog posts, products, and services relating to customer satisfaction and retention at http://www.KristinaEvey.com

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Time to Start Working For Yourself?

By Alex I Black

The constraints and problems that have arisen in the past year due to the credit crunch have affected all of us: There comes a time when the majority of people want to take the plunge.

But where do you start?

Firstly the product, make sure you have a unique offering, in these times the price is essential. Everyone is looking for a bargain!

Remember you need to create a bulletproof business plan.

Company Description
Product or Service
Market Analysis
Strategy & Implementation
Management Team
Financial Plan
Executive Summary.

Further info on the bbc website:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2943252.stm

Obviously a good accountant is essential, not only can they take a lot of administration away from you but also provide invaluable advice, albeit for a fee! You have to bear in mind that one of the threats to your steady cash flow is the taxman. You need to make sure you are saving a proportion of your profit to pay the taxes at the end of the year.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants is s good place to start looking for a professional accountant and advice:
www.icaew.com

You also need to build up a good rapport with your bank manager; setting up business accounts with overdraft facilities is paramount while trying to establish a business. Most banks such as Natwest still require a personal guarantee, even for a limited company.

Corporate Promotion

The look and tone of your business are the crux of how you are perceived by your clients. Companies such as http://www.sbsplinter.com have been created to help newly started businesses. Offering professional logo designs, letterheads and website for a very reasonable price.

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On Being an Informed Source

Barbara Winter

As all business owners discover, running a business is mostly on-the-job training. Knowing that information exists that can answer almost any question is an enormous confidence builder- but that fact is frequently overlooked. While the helpless loser goes around whining, "But I don't know how to do that," the successful among us are busy seeking information that will show them how. Then they get busy putting what they've uncovered to work for them.

This fascination with information is also necessary for entrepreneurial success. "In times of change," wrote Eric Hoffer, "learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."

Whatever your business is about, one of the best ways to ensure success is to make a commitment to becoming an Informed Source. Here are some ways to do just that.

* Make learning a priority and schedule time for it. While just running a business can be a profound learning experience, we need other points of view, other bits of information in order to grow to our fullest potential. Make time for acquiring that knowledge by regular reading, attending seminars, meeting with other self-bossers who are farther down the road.

* Learn from the best. Jim Rohn is vocal in urging his audiences to seek learning from the best sources they can find. He says, "There are three ways one can go about learning from others: 1. Through published literature such as books and audio or video tapes. 2. By listening to the wisdom and folly of others. 3. Through observations of winners and losers. So become a good observer. "

The barriers that keep many people from learning from the best sources is that they either can't discern good from not so good or they start comparing themselves to those who are more accomplished and miss the lessons they could learn. It's far more effective to decide to find the best teachers you can and devour their lessons.

* Learn to edit. Editing is the process of sifting through large amounts of material and taking out the bad, the so-so, the mediocre, the unimportant, and leaving in the best. Learning to edit is also learning to discriminate, to prioritize, to evaluate. As an Informed Source, your audience depends on you to deliver only that information which is pertinent. Incidentally, being a good editor doesn't just apply to information: it's also a necessary skill for living your best life...or posting on Twitter.

* Be generous in sharing. Robert Allen earned his first fortune investing in real estate. He built a second empire sharing his successful system through seminars and books. Even if you have no interest in packaging information yourself, there are many ways to share what you know. For instance, one of the most popular guests on Minnesota Public Radio was Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens who frequently shared information on getting the most from your computer. That visibility (plus some fabulously creative marketing) made him stand out from the crowd.

* Put it to work. "Knowledge is power is only half a truth," said Andrew Carnegie, "for knowledge is only potential power. It may become a power only when it is organized and expressed in terms of definite action." Yes, it's fun to know things just for the sake of knowing them, but the truly brilliant users of information are always looking for ways to adapt what they've learned to their own situations. Doing your homework gives you confidence, but only if you use what you've learned.

Barbara J. Winter is a Las Vegas-based self-employment advocate and writer. She is the author of Making a Living Without a Job. She conducts seminars throughout the US and Canada on creative self-employment. Her newest events are a one-day seminar called What Would an Entrepreneur Do? and a three-day event, Compelling Storytelling. She also publishes Winning Ways newsletter, now in its twenty-second year of helping people turn passions into profits. http://www.joyfullyjobless.com

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