If you run your own business, you must establish a positive reputation and a strong rapport with each client and business associate. Building a strong rapport with each person might take time, but investing the effort to establish a harmonious relationship with the people who choose to do business with you may help your company grow in more ways than you’ve imagined.
1. Never Ignore Feedback
Good or bad feedback should never be ignored, and your clients will feel like they’re being heard if you take the time to respond to comments or questions that they have. If someone is airing a grievance, you may be able to solve their problem quickly and win them back over as a loyal customer if you issue a fast response.
You should also respond quickly to positive feedback so that customers who choose to do business with you and state something good about your company will feel more appreciated. If you respond to a lot of the feedback that has been posted on review websites, you may even attract more new customers who believe that they won’t be ignored if they have anything to say about your products or services.
2. Tap into Emotions
Objectivity plays a key role in managing logistics and making important business decisions, but you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of emotions. Consumers are often drawn into making purchases if they feel some sort of emotional attachment to a particular product, service, or company, and you can use the power of emotion to your advantage.
For example, you can discuss a problem that may cause people to feel frustrated or inconvenienced in some other way and then talk about how your products or services can solve that problem. You can also let customers know how excited and happy you are to do business with them and express these emotions in your customer interactions.
Another smart idea is to include images, such as sunsets, waterfalls, or peaceful landscapes, on your company’s website to try to elicit positive emotional responses from website visitors.
3. Always Keep in Touch
People who do business with you will feel more appreciated if you make efforts to communicate with them regularly in thoughtful ways. One of the best ways to stay in touch is to send newsletters either in physical form or by email that explains what is currently happening with your company and possibly include special offers to save customers money.
To personalize your communications, even more, you can send embossed cards or other customized stationery items that feature the names of customers or other business associates and any other special messages that you want to feature.
4. Follow Through on Promises
If you make a promise to a customer, a vendor, or someone else who does business with you, you should always try to keep your word. This includes honoring any guarantees on products or services and offering reasonable compensation anytime a guarantee can’t be met.
If you don’t follow through on your promises, people will likely lose trust in your business and may choose to affiliate with a rival company instead.
5. Try to Arrange In-Person Interactions Often
Even in the modern era, many people still enjoy person-to-person contact, and you can build better rapport with each person by arranging in-person meetings as much as possible. If anyone who does business with you has something important to discuss, see if you or one of your representatives can arrange a face-to-face meeting with this person.
You might also consider taking certain clients or vendors out to lunch to discuss business matters in a more relaxed setting. You can have in-person interactions with more people at a time if you host open houses or other events that are open to the public or certain clients or other business associates.
If you can’t meet in person, you can still offer people more personable experiences by conducting meetings through a video conferencing program.
6. Remember Details About Other People
All too often, businesses treat customers like numbers or statistical units rather than as people. You can fight against this trend and give each client a more personable experience by remembering important personal details about them.
In addition to their name, you might try to remember a client’s particular interests along with details about their family or job that they’ve shared with you. Details about their preferred products or services are also important to remember.
Wrapping Up
Rapport can often be a key element to a business’s success. If you put forth the energy to establish the best rapport possible with each person, your company will likely be rewarded for your effort.
