“Stewardship” helps companies cultivate deeper, more profitable relationships
By Tuan Huynh, William Mills Agency
The following is a recap of a session for WMA staff led by Selling Solutions President & Founder, William L. Paullin and Vice President of Communication & Sales Motivation, James Paullin. Selling Solutions’ wealth of knowledge comes from years of experience working with companies like Apple Computer, Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, Anheuser-Busch and Burger King.
Many companies believe they have achieved “partner” status with their customers. What can companies do to attain and maintain the kind of relationship that will endure?
The technical definition of stewardship is “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care,” and, based on Selling Solutions’ proven experience, therein lies a great deal of potential for organizations to solidify and grow more meaningful relationships with their customers.
By strategically and methodically planning out your stewardship goals for clients, you will establish a set of guidelines to continually enhance your customer relationships – but there are some general guidelines to establish first. For example, knowing the position that you hold with your customer will help you establish opportunities without overreaching. Once you know your position, be selective by knowing when to offer services and which services even need to be offered. Keeping things simple and customer-focused enables you to be able to listen to your customers’ needs and goals and respond with direct, relevant answers.
Being able to offer the right service and communicating to the right people within your customer’s organization at the right time, and doing this in the right way, will help foster a more positive relationship with customers.
Stewardship meetings are an effective way to gain access to a more collaborative relationship with higher-level executives and decision makers. According to Selling Solutions, higher-level executives seek five key factors from their vendors:
· The ability to marshal resources
· Understanding their business goals/objectives
· Responsiveness to their requests
· The willingness to be held accountable
· Knowledge of the company’s products
Meeting these factors enhances your value to your client and prepares you for a stewardship discussion.
Another approach to secure stewardship meetings is to facilitate a “Top-to-Top” meeting, where you send your top executive to meet your customer’s top executive (or the highest ranking executive in the decision chain relative to your professional engagement). This can lead to a profitable discussion and exchange of ideas between the two and can expand your services with the customer. If you do this though, make sure your executive is aware of the situation and has all the supporting details so that he or she can be a knowledgeable source of information and ideas.
Overall, practicing good stewardship increases the profitability of client relationships. It is more profitable to retain a client than having to spend resources in searching for and gearing up with a new one. Your return on investment will increase over the lifespan of the client relationship. Taking the time to build effective stewardship strategies for clients is a key way to enrich your relationships.
To learn more about Selling Solutions, please visit http://www.selsol.com.
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