Stakeholders - people or customers or organizations that have a legitimate interest in your business. A large part of managing yourself revolves around knowing how to work with other people. To do this, it is first important to be clear about who these other people are in the first place and what they expect from you.
Of course, there are some commonalities: Everyone wants to be treated with respect, sincerity, openness and fairness. So fair treatment is the name of the game.
In this article, we'll make sure that you understand and what you should do to get along with your stakeholders.
Satisfaction in the first place
Probably one of the biggest tasks in management is to keep everyone happy. Sometimes you succeed in keeping everyone happy, but often you don't. If you're a good manager, however, you'll quickly get over the occasional failure because you know exactly how best to handle the situation. You set standards and make them clear to everyone in your work environment - and you stick to them. What is your top expectation when you enter into a partnership with a customer, for example? That's right, you expect honesty.
Only honest and open communication leads to a successful good relationship between your prospects and you. Credibility drops rapidly to zero if you are secretive and insist you can do no wrong.
5 Tips to build a successful and long-term relationship with customers:
You can handle inconvenience
Do you know the basics of your business and the standards you apply? Can you clearly define and communicate them? If so, you can be guaranteed that all stakeholders will associate your company with certain expectations. Nobody likes to deal with unpleasant, cold or distant people. Sometimes, however, there's no getting around it. When such an opportunity approaches, most people sink into themselves - they look for excuses and prefer to deal with other things and try to ignore the situation. The best thing you can do, however, is to deal with the person in question immediately. As a manager, you should overlook people's personalities and focus on their role in the company.
No one goes down in embarrassment, neither you nor the person you are dealing with.
You convey trust
The consistency with which you treat people is the foundation of the trust they have in you. Make sure you are consistent in your dealings with all stakeholders. Trust can be built both immediately and over time.
Immediate trust is inspired by how other people perceive your first encounter with them. Thus, if you come across as friendly, positive, competent and engaged, you create an immediate foundation for trust. If, on the other hand, you appear reserved or insecure, you will have a harder time conveying trust in subsequent encounters, regardless of how good your work is.
You know your stakeholders
Your customers expect consistency, integrity and honesty in your dealings with them.
Tom Peters said:
"If you offer good products and services, plus good customer service, you will make your fortune".
In short, this is the key to understanding your customers and clients. You should always be clear about what they want and expect from you and what they don't. Make sure that your services at least meet their expectations. This means that your products and services must be available in the required quantity and at the required locations with the required quality at a price that your customers and clients are willing to pay.
Always ask yourself the following questions to better understand and identify your customers:
- Why do these customers of all people come to you and not the others?
- What keeps these customers coming back to you?
- What would make your customers change their buying and consumption habits with you?
Just a little empathy can go a long way! For example, how would you feel if you wanted to speak to someone from customer service and then ended up on hold or were told that the person in charge wasn't available right now? Dissatisfied at best...
You know how to exploit your customer touchpoints.
The interface between customer and company, i.e. the customer touchpoints, should be used as efficiently as possible to deepen, understand and analyze the customer relationship. The initial contact with the customer already provides you with vast amounts of relevant information, which you should prioritize and identify afterwards. But every subsequent conversation is also important, of course, to successfully build a B2B relationship.
You always keep your CRM in mind
Everyone works with a wide variety of CRM systems to record all of the customer's information. The important thing is simply that you do it, no matter how or where! All the details that show, among other things, what needs or target desires the customer is pursuing are recorded here. In addition, you have access to valuable reserves, which can only benefit you in a future collaboration. So do not forget to enter everything diligently and neatly in a customer database.
Conclusion - Prosupo at your side
Never lose track of all important information and strive for more than just satisfying your customers. A successful and long lasting cooperation with others is much more than that. Mutual appreciation and authentic communication at eye level should not be questioned at all. Use your expertise and above all your professionalism as an entrepreneur to connect with the best of the best and win them as happy customers.
At Prosupo, we help you do just that with our wide range of services. Contact us today to find out where we can assist you.
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