Is your referral engine running smoothly? (Photo by clix)
Business and client relationships can be difficult to develop and nurture, but they’re important to building a sustaining business that grows year after year. What often happens is the initial contact with someone starts out strong and then it tapers off. There isn’t an immediate need or opportunity and so the potential client or business partner gets put to the back burner where it’s forgotten.
The key to preventing that from happening is to think on behalf of the other person, says Nancy Fox in her article, The Stuff Real Business Relationships Are Made Of. You might not have a direct or immediate offering, but you can do things that keep the relationship active and take it to the next level, she says. With business relationships, you can ask the person to write for your blog or newsletter, ask them to speak at an event you’re organizing, or offer to give recommendations.
With client relationships, whether it’s a prospect you’re wooing or a current client, periodically reach out to them to let them know you’re thinking about them and their issues. Send them articles, refer them to research reports, tell them about case studies, and keep them up to date on what you and your firm are doing.
Social media has become a useful tool for nurturing and maintaining relationships. You can use it to share articles and ideas and to provide recommendations, such as on LinkedIn. More than that, however, the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. say social media increasingly drives more visitors to their websites and blogs, generates leads, and helps with sales, according to research on social media use conducted by the Center for Marketing Research, UMass Dartmouth.
In addition, social media has made it easier for people to make referrals. With the click of a mouse, people in and out of your network can tell hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people about an article you wrote, a webinar you presented, or a service you provided—and provided exceptionally well.
Referrals, especially for professional services firms, are the best way to generate new business, says John Jantsch, author of The Referral Engine in his podcast interview, The Best Way to Generate Referrals and Get More Leads. That’s because referrals help establish trust. When a client says your services helped him and that working with you was a pleasure, the trust is there and can shorten the sales cycle.
If you’re doing all that you can to develop relationships and get referrals, you might still hit roadblocks and wonder if you’re doing the right things to find clients. If you find you are continually struggling, you might want to take a look at your marketing model, says Julia D. Stege in her article, What You Seek is Seeking You: Authentic Marketing is Key. You might discover that the traditional marketing model creates only stress and no new clients. What you may need instead is an authentic marketing plan that enables them to attract the perfect clients, she says.
Bruce Marcus also suggests looking at your marketing tactics, for tactics that work well in one scenario may be disastrous for another. That’s especially the case if you apply product marketing tactics to professional services, he writes in his article, How to Succeed with Professional Services Marketing. Service marketing has different objectives than product marketing, and firms must heed these if they want their campaigns to succeed.
Your Turn: What have been your experiences with marketing professional services or developing relationships with clients and business partners? What have you done that worked well? What tactics failed?
