Generating Sales Leads By Building Relationships

In the new era of marketing, it's all about the conversation. The goal of building a relationship with your customers is to keep your brand in mind.

It is often stated that the best leads come from referrals. This is because their is no warmer lead. Somebody who they have a relationship with has recommended you to them, which gives you the kind of credibility you can't build on your own.

Or can you? 

As a matter of fact, you can. The way to do this is to build a relationship with the lead yourself. In this way, your recommendation to try one of your own products acts almost like a referral. This is why building relationships is such a crucial part of an effective business strategy.

Staying In Mind

The goal of building a relationship with your customers is to keep your brand in mind. This doesn't mean that your customers should be thinking about your brand at all times, which would be a rather disturbing situation to try to implement in the first place. It does mean that if the subject of your particular industry comes up, your brand is the first one that comes to mind.

To see where a company has really pulled this off, think of the phrase, "facial tissue." Is there anybody who actually uses this phrase, and not Kleenex?

Of course, this kind of market domination is much more difficult than it was in the past, if it isn't completely impossible. There was a time when overloading the population with advertisements was a winning strategy, but in the modern era this appears to be changing.

The new strategy is to build a relationship with your customer base, in a way that involves them.

The Conversation

In the new era of marketing, it's all about the conversation. Dialogue, as opposed to monologue. This has proven to be the fundamental change brought about by the emergence of social media. Businesses no longer lecture to their customers, they talk with them. At least, that is the direction that things seem to be headed in.

This tactic isn't exactly new, but it has never quite been visible on the same scale. In direct sales, building the relationship has always been an important part of the process. Party planners don't just sell products, they throw parties. Car salesman are encouraged to learn about their prospects, to talk to them about their lives and not just the cars. This helps build a relationship, leading to sales that are based more in trust than in anything else.

The difference with social media is the fact that this conversation now takes place in a public arena, where the lines between direct sales and advertising are being blurred. The crucial lesson here is that it is important to develop trust with your customer base. It must be legitimate, and it is almost impossible to fake.

Article Tags: Building Relationships

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