Teaming up with Your Customers, Part 3

Software and technology companies think a lot about partnering with other companies to provide goods and services to a shared customer base. A partnership that is just as powerful and may be more lucrative for you is partnering with your customers. How are you helping your customers become more successful in their businesses? This has a major impact on their relationship with your organization. Help them be more successful and they’ll help you be more successful.

We’ve been posting a series of articles by Brian Tracy talking about the importance of teaming with your customers. This segment covers the second key to keep customers for life, partnering for profit.

Teaming up with Your Customers, Part 3
By: Brian Tracy
Beyond relationship selling, the second key to keeping customers for life is the “partnering for profit” approach to business sales. When you deal with a businessperson, you can be sure of one thing: that person thinks about his business day and night. It is very close to him. It is dear to his heart. And if you come in and talk to him and ask him questions about his business, looking for ways to help him run his business better, the customer is going to warm up to you and want to be associated with you and your company.

As a partner, you should always be looking to help your customer to cut costs and improve results in his or her area of responsibility. You should look for ways to help your customer in non-business areas as well. You should position yourself as someone who cares more about the success of your customer than anything else, even more than you care about selling your product or service. This approach to partnering in profit with your customer is a key way to differentiate yourself and to keep your customer for the indefinite future.

There is a principle of reciprocity in business that is extremely powerful. It is simply this: If you do something nice for someone else, they will feel obligated to do something nice for you. You should be looking for opportunities to go the extra mile, to do more than you are paid for, to put in more than you take out. By extending yourself, you improve your positioning in the customer’s mind and increasingly differentiate yourself and your company from your competitors who are after the same business. If you do this long enough and strong enough, you will eventually develop the partnership to the point where your competitors don’t have a chance against you.

About The Author
Brian Tracy is legendary in sales, addressing more than 250,000 men and women each year on the subjects of management, leadership, and sales effectiveness. He has produced more than 300 audio/video programs and has written 36 books, including his just-released books “TurboStrategy” and “Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life.” He can be reached at (858) 481-2977 or www.briantracy.com.