The many people who are involved in our Mr. Shmooze community are interested in dynamic customer relations. Most of you spend a lot of time trying to enhance those relationships both personally and as a smart and enjoyable way to do business. But how do we know we are actually making progress with our customers for all the energy and activity we are putting into it. Here is something we like to do to add some discipline to the process.
Take a single client or prospect. Write down two categories . . . personal relationship and business you are doing with him/her. You are going to rank these 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). The goal is a combined score of 10. Our goal is for our best relationships to have combined scores of 8-10.
Do you see where we are going with this? You can spend all sorts of time wining and dining someone and take the personal score up to 5, but if you are not getting any business, the business score will be a 1, and the combined score a 6. That doesn’t work and you now have to think about why. You have the personal relationship covered, but are you missing a chance to help him on the business side. Or perhaps he does not have the buying power you thought he did. Whatever the case, both sides need to be energized, or all of your good will be wasted . . . it feels like you are getting somewhere, but your time and investment could be better spent in other ways and/or with other people.
It’s easy to build a big rolodex. It’s much more challenging and much, MUCH more rewarding to build a rolodex full of 8’s, 9’s and 10’s.
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