Being Married to Your Customers, Part 3: What a Good Relationship Can Do for You September 02, 2011, by Peter Mirus in
I once read a book called “Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Black Book of Connections: 6.5 Assets for Networking Your Way to Rich Relationships”. The very first statement in the book, and I mean THE very first (printed in large letters on the inside cover), is this:
“All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends. All things being not quite so equal, people STILL want to do business with their friends. HINT: To climb the ladder of success, you don’t need more techniques and strategies, you need more friends.”
That’s it in a nutshell. When you create a friendship, based on honesty and personal responsibility, trust takes over and both parties look for ways to further benefit each other within the relationship. Within the constraints of prudence, generosity gives way to generosity.
If you place a high priority on trust within friendships, it means treating the other party with respect, being willing to listen, and making decisions that are in both parties’ best interests. Communication is frequent and forthright.
When you have that kind of relationship, mistakes made are construed to be “honest mistakes” and the tendency to deal with those issues productively is much greater.
However, we don’t strive to create good relationships just so that the occasional mistake will be tolerated. We need to continue to strive to be the best and not use friendship as an excuse for mediocrity.
What we need to shoot for is this: All things being MORE THAN EQUAL, people want to do business with their friends.
In a marriage, the spouses can’t just each bring 50% to the table. Each individual has to bring 100%. You can’t “kind of” commit to a marriage, and you can’t “kind of” commit to good customer relationship management.