Elements of a Relationship Strategy
A relationship strategy that builds customer knowledge and trust is very different from brief, transaction-based strategies. Developing the necessary customer knowledge, learning how to apply it effectively, and building customer trust in your ability to deliver value requires a long-term commitment to, and contact process with, customers. Only over time can trust be built and a willingness to share vital information created. But really knowing your customer or client and being truly responsive is costly, time-consuming, hard work. You can't do it for every customer unless your customer base is very small.
This means targeting — deciding which customer groups and individual customers justify the extra effort in terms of their current profitability, future profit potential, or other important measure of return, and developing a clear, focused strategy for each customer group. For your least valuable customers, a relationship strategy may not be economically feasible and you will be forced to use a transaction-based approach.
While there is much more that could be written about relationship strategies, this overview is sufficient to identify the elements of a relationship strategy. You must have:
þ Commitment to pursuing a relationship development process
þ Enough customer knowledge to allow customer grouping
þ A targeting strategy that prioritizes efforts among customer groups
þ A relationship-based marketing and selling strategy for each customer group.
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Strengthening Customer/Client Relationships