ABSTRACT

IMPORTANCE OF
STRONG
CUSTOMER
RELATIONSHIPS
Term Paper-Marketing Management

Building a good relationship

with customers is an essential
skill in business. Often, it is the
personal relationship that is
generated with clients what
makes the difference between it
decides to buy from you or
competition.

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Submitted by,

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Contents

Page No:

Introduction

Unlock the Mysteries of Your Customer

Relationships.- HBR

Build customer relationships that last.

-HBR

Manage Customer-Centric Innovation-Systematically -HBR

Do You Want to Keep Your Customers

Forever?-HBR

Customer-Centered Brand Management-HBR

Plagiarism Report

1. Introduction
Building a good relationship with customers is an essential skill in business. For almost all
businesses and services offered, there are hundreds or thousands of suppliers. Often, it is
the personal relationship that is generated with clients what makes the difference between it
decides to buy from you or competition.

Importance of maintaining good relations with customers

1) Building a good relationship with customers usually means properly meet the needs
of the customer. While many marketing experts say that advertising can build rapport,
Merriam-Webster defines this relationship as "a relationship marked by harmony ... or
affinity". Indeed, advertising is based on word of mouth, brand recognition and brand
identity, and can be considered as the driving force behind sales, but a good
relationship means building a strong and trusting relationship.
2) Knowing the customer face to face, either within the company, in a meeting, at lunch
or at an informal meeting, requires basic conversational and social
skills. Concentrate on what the customer wants, what motivates him and what he
lacks. Try to get the customer to talk about himself.
3) Choose a hard or soft sell. Depending on factors such as time, place and personality
of the client, you may want to use a hard or soft sell. A hard sell is when you focus
directly to your business. An example would be a car salesman on your lot. He will
speak on the sale of a car, which car is cheaper or get the best mileage. On the other
hand, an example of a soft sell is a real estate agent who first asks the client about
his family, children, work and future plans. In this case, the agent is not directly
talking about buying a house, but is indirectly requesting information so you can
know what the best product to sell is and what are the values that handle the
customer, using this information to describe the product. A person may be looking to
improve their status, so that the seller must establish good communication,
explaining how the product is exclusive and unique, or the buyer will not be
interested in your proposal.
4) To steer the conversation your way you must maintain a strict respect, humour,
knowledge and charisma. There are many books on sales and marketing, online help
and classes to learn this. A reference book on basic tasks to build rapport with
customers is "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. One of
his main points is that all information is good information. Simply talking with a client
you cannot bring immediate benefits, but there can always be future uses of the
information you get. There is a great intrinsic value simply by giving your time and
attention to a client, leading to a better, closer relationship and greater sales
opportunity.

5) Watch the experts are one of the best ways to become a talker who can build
rapport. Watch TV with a great interviewer, like Conan O'Brien, David Letterman,
Oprah Winfrey and Larry King. Notice how the main questions to get maximum
information client do. Note what the facts and background they bring to the
conversation that makes the "client" is comfortable and expand on what is asked are.

It is very important to foster a good relationship with the customer loyalty. Client
satisfaction and assist in the promotion of sales and attracting new customers. To achieve
these results you must know how they are meeting their needs and how this can
help improve key and successful aspects of the product, the process of sale, sales, etc.
Article Review

1) Unlock the Mysteries of Your Customer Relationships.

Source: Harvard Business Review July 2014...
Author: Jill Avery, Susan Fornier & John Wittenbraker
Despite the $11 billion spent on CRM software package annually, several client
corporations dont perceive client relationships in the least. They arent alert to the variability
of relationship sorts and dont perceive what kind their customers wish. Through analysis
during a wide range of client industries, the authors have known twenty nine varieties of
relationships. For instance, some customers wish to be best friends with a brand; others
square measure searching for an ardent fling; still others notice themselves as ex-friends
and would welcome a better bond. to know this portfolio of relationships, corporations should
devour on signals from multiple sources. Corporations will then build a strategic mixture of
connections by bolstering desired relationships and shifting customers to more-valuable
sorts. There square measure several problems to consider: for instance, some relationship
sorts square measure additional profitable than others. No actions can bear fruit unless a
relationship orientation pervades not simply the selling perform however each side of the
corporate that touches customers or affects interactions with them. Customers dont simply
represent consecutive Up-sell or Cross-sell opportunity; they're people searching for a
particular quite interaction. Corporations ought to respond consequently.

2) Build customer relationships that last.

Author: Barbara Bund Jackson
Harvard Business Review. Nov 1985,

Marketing has long stressed the importance of being near the client. however however
shut will a trafficker realistically get to its customer? For what duration? And below what
circumstances can customers build robust commitments to individual vendors? once,
instead, can customers like weaker ties, maybe to variety of various sellers? In news on a
probe project that explored permanent relationships between industrial customers and their
suppliers, this author responds to the preceding and alternative queries concerning patterns
of customer-vendor behaviour. Building and maintaining lasting client ties, she suggests,
involves doing variety of things right, systematically, over time. It takes coordination on the a
part of the vendor of resources and tools to fulfil the customer's future further as its
immediate wants.

3) Manage Customer-Centric Innovation--Systematically.

Author: Larry Selden and Ian C Macmilan

Harvard Business Review. April 2006
No matter however exhausting corporations attempt, their approaches to innovation
typically do not grow the highest line within the sustained, profitable means investors expect.
for several corporations, there is a large distinction between what is in their business plans
and therefore the market's expectations for growth (as mirrored in firms' share costs,
capitalisation, and P/E ratios). This growth gap springs from the very fact that corporations
area unit running cash into their insular R&D labs rather than operating to know what the
client needs and victimization that understanding to drive innovation. As a result, even
corporations that pay the foremost on R&D stay starved for each client innovation and
market-capitalization growth. During this article, the authors spell out a scientific approach to
innovation that unceasingly fuels sustained, profitable growth. They decision this approach
customer-centric innovation, or CCI. At the center of CCI could be a rigorous client R&D
method that helps corporations to repeatedly improve their understanding of WHO their
customers area unit and what they have. By thus doing, they systematically produce or
improve their client price proposition. Client R&D additionally focuses on higher ways that of
human activity price propositions and delivering the entire expertise to real customers. Since
so much of the training concerning customers so much of the experimentation with totally
different Segmentation, price propositions, and delivery mechanisms involve the who often
affect customers, it's fully essential for front staff to be at the middle of the CCI method.
Simply put, client R&D propels the innovation effort faraway from headquarters and therefore
the ancient R& D science lab dead set those closest to the client. Victimization the instance
of the bags manufacturer Tumi, the authors give a piecemeal approach for achieving true
customer-centric innovation.
4)

Do You Want to Keep Your Customers Forever?

Author: Joseph Pine II, Don Peppers, Martha Rogers

Source: Harvard Business Review. March-April 1995,

Customers, whether or not customers or businesses, don't need additional decisions.

they need specifically what they need once, where, and the way they need it and technology
currently makes it doable for firms to convey it to them. However few firms area unit
exploiting that potential. Most managers still read the planet through the dual lenses of mass
promoting and production. To handle progressively turbulent and fragmented markets, they
struggle to churn out a larger kind of merchandise and services and to tailor their messages
to ever finer market segments. However they find yourself bombarding their customers with
too several decisions. a corporation that aspires to convey customers specifically what they
need should use technology to become 2 things: a mass customizer that with efficiency
provides separately made-to-order merchandise and services, and a matched merchandiser
that elicits data from every client. the method of effort those skills can bind producer and
shopper along in what the authors decision a learning relationship--an current collaboration
to satisfy the customer's wants over time which will regularly strengthen their bond. In
learning relationships, individual customers teach the corporate concerning their preferences
and wishes. The additional they teach the corporate, the higher it gets at providing
specifically what they need and also the tougher it becomes for a challenger to tempt them
away. a corporation which will cultivate learning relationships with its customers ought to be
ready to retain their business forever, as long as it continues to produce high-quality madeto-order product or services at competitive costs and doesn't miss following technology
wave.

5) Customer-Centered Brand Management.

Author: Roland T Rust, Valarie A Zeithaml, Katherine Lermon
Source: Harvard Business Review. Sept 2004,

Most executives these days agree that their efforts ought to be cantered on growing
the period price of their customers. Nevertheless few corporations have return to terms with
the implications of that concept for his or her selling management. Oldsmobile, as an
example, enjoyed outstanding whole equity with many shoppers through the Eighties.
However because the century wore additional on, the folks that idolized the Olds got
downright recent. Therefore why did General Motors pay such a big amount of years then a
lot of cash making an attempt to reposition and freshen up the tired, spotted brand? Why did
not GM managers instead move younger consumers on a path of less resistance, toward
another of the easy way in GM's stable--or even launch an entirely new brand intermeshed
to their tastes? Occupation to new customers, even at the expense of the whole, would sure
enough are the trail to profits. The reason, argue the authors, is that in giant consumergoods corporations like General Motors, brands are the basis. Theyre the main focus of
higher cognitive process and also the basis of answerability. However this overwhelming
specialize in growing whole equity is inconsistent with the goal of growing client equity.
Drawing on a good vary of current examples, the authors supply seven ways that may place
brands within the service of growing client equity. These embrace replacement ancient
whole managers with position--the client phase manager; targeting wholes to as slender
associate audience as possible; developing the potential and also the mind-set at hand off
customers from one brand to a different inside the company; and ever-changing the

approach brand equity is measured by basing calculations on individual, instead of average,

client information..

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Total Quantity: 20%
Date: Saturday, March 14, 2015
Statistics: 356 words Plagiarized / 1814 Total words
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