Dating Your Customers

Client Relationship Management for Newbies

Jemma Schilling
Cirillo Hooper and Company

Looking to attract new clients?

Want to go straight to the source and ask

your existing customers for feedback on your service? It sounds simple, a conversation or two over coffee about your business, which you should know inside out and upside down. Then why is it the area that most business owners have the LEAST confidence in? I recently attended a Proactive Accountants Network conference in Brisbane, on behalf of Cirillo Hooper and Company. What we found out was that of the 20 business owners and partners in the room, on average the area that we all had the least confidence in was Client Facing and Sales. As the only non-accountant in the room (WIP days WTF?!) this was really surprising to me, and I decided to look further into this paradox It seems that sales masters that are blessed with the gift of the gab may only exist in movies such as Glenngarry Glen Ross (watch Alec Baldwins sales monologue hilarious), and in the real world most business owners get too tied up and bogged down in the day to day activities of actually running their business, that they dont have the time to dedicate to their customers.

How you communicate what you are trying to achieve will determine how
successful your business is, as there is obviously a genuine reason you got into what you are doing upwards of 40 hours per week. You as a business owner know better than anyone else why the client should buy into your service or invest in your products, but the process of communicating that relevantly and succinctly can be difficult. At the end of the day, you want to help your clients and leave them feeling like they got a huge value add from your service, so much so that they will refer ten of their friends! By treating your clients as long-term relationships (yes, its exactly like dating), you will ensure great communication, customer

satisfaction and a lifetime of loyalty. THE 6 CUSTOMER DATING STAGES

MAKING EYES ACROSS THE ROOM Segmenting The Market (Targeting) EXCHANGING PHONE NUMBERS Getting Leads DINNER AND A MOVIE Initial Meeting FACEBOOK OFFICIAL Negotiations and Follow-Up Meetings WHITE CHAPEL WEDDING First Sale/Contract LIVING IN SUBURBIA WITH 2.5 KIDS Partnership/Long-Term Client

Over the next few chapters I will explore these stages of successful communication with clients and stakeholders in more depth, in order to bring your business back to where its focus should be your customers and your values. And like dating, there will be butterflies involved

Making Eyes Across The Room

Segmenting The Market To start off with, Im going to delve further into the first customer dating stage
Making Eyes Across The Room. In non-dating speak, this is the point where you should be segmenting and scoping out your target market for potential leads, referrals and even just meeting inspiring people to have coffee with and increase your LinkedIn network. So how do you start? Not to state the obvious, but in order to meet your future partner (or hot bridesmaid) at your third cousin's wedding reception, you need to be the one that is there in an over starched white collared shirt standing awkwardly at the bar. Some of us can pull this off better than others, but the point is you need to BE IN the room to start with! Refer to my blog on networking (www.cirillohooper.com/blog/networking_be_the_farmer) in terms of how to network specifically, but it pays to also be in the right frame of mind when scoping out the talent in the room. I recently attended a networking event held by Servcorp Business Shorts, where the keynote speaker Michelle Santon (CEO of Zonehigh) highlighted the important of being In The Zone. She has developed her theory into somewhat of an art form, highlighted by the difference in networking done post-workshop, in comparison to the herd of stressed business people that were gathered around the free wine in order to get their 5:00pm happy hour fix. Michelle boiled it down to 20% strategy and 80% mindset, and being In The Zone. There was a number of resources available to discover how to actually get into the zone, but I think its just a matter of working out WHY the hell you are there in the first place (and admit it people, sometimes it IS just for the free wine..). Segmenting your market shouldnt necessarily happen in the room, do your research first and attend events that you know are going to be busting at the seams with your potential customers, or are your future potential customers (*cough cough* university students who are living off Ramen Noodles now but in 3 years will be making more money than you). At the end of the day, dont ever disqualify anyone as not worth engaging with they might not be a potential customer, but they will have mothers, brothers, cousins etc. that could be, and word of mouth referrals cant be beat! As Chris always tells me, I can tell people that Im awesome, but they will believe it more if someone they trust is telling them that Im awesome.

As for capturing the attention of the hot bridesmaid at your cousins wedding reception,
I cant tell you how best to do that, but a bit of liquid courage, an introduction from the best man and the knowledge that she also has an equally good looking sister who is recently separated definitely helps.

Exchanging Phone Numbers

Getting Leads

Dating your customers can sometimes be exhausting, considering you need to

allocate ample time to prospective clients, whilst still nurturing the relationships already formed in order to ensure long-term sustainability. It can feel overwhelming; as if you are growing your business then you have to be mindful of scaling too fast and not being able to support the growth, whilst not letting the sales side stagnate. Following on from the last chapter about actually being in a position to attract new clients through networks and opportunities, Im going to explore the period between those awkward handshakes at an event to the thrill of recognising your date on the first go the next week. I attended the Team20 Business Breakfast event last week, held by the enigmatic Trent Blucher and attended by 30 plus small business owners and entrepreneurs who were eager enough to be up at 7:30am on a Thursday (needless to say I was on my second coffee before I could structure a sentence). What Trent focused on was Lead

Generation, and in particular having 9 channels of leads, through different sources

and an overall strategy. By having 9 complimenting sources of leads to generate new clients, you are not putting all your eggs in one basket per se, and will overall have a larger and more stable client base that has the potential to scale quickly. The biggest revelation of this concept was not WHAT the lead channels were, but that having a defined strategy in place (HOW) that is customised to your business and understood (WHY) by all involved is what drives sales. Bringing it back to dating (dont worry - I didnt forget that this is a dating column masquerading as a business blog) once you have these leads captured, you need a follow-up strategy in place to capitalise as quickly as possible. The whole wait-three-days-before-you-call-a-girl-rule? Not applicable here. Cirillo Hooper and Company operates on a 24 hour strategy 1. 2. 3. 4. Meet the person See potential for collaboration (or just an interesting chat!) Exchange details (phone number/email/facebook/twitter) Call, email, friend request, follow as soon as you are in front of a computer (within 24 hours) 5. Set up a time to meet within the next week 6. Offer to buy them coffee This strategy ensures consistency and reliability every time and for every client, and it is shows that you are not taking a passive approach to working with someone. We ARE

interested and we DO want to meet you!

And at the very least, its an excuse to feed our caffeine addictions

Dinner and a Movie

Initial Meeting

So youve done the hard yards, youve made the cold calls, attended the
networking events and set up your first official date with a prospective client nice stuff! This is the fun part, where you actually get to dedicate the time and energy to meet inspirational people, who are doing some really innovative and forward-thinking stuff within their respective industries. If you havent done much client-facing before, it can be surprisingly daunting! Like a first date when you know you have to impress the girl by looking sharp, being chivalrous and simultaneously trying to erase their first awkward opinion of you accidently spilling your drink on them the way you present yourself is super important. Theres something to be said for wearing the right clothes, but Im pretty sure you would have read that in every other article on interviews and first impressions, so Im just going to say this be memorable. Not by choosing to wear only a green oversized speedo Borat-style, but by dressing sharp with a twist of your personality. For example I always wear a unique necklace which, as well as serving as a conversation starter, draws my companions attention away from the fact that I am a University student who cant yet afford to buy the top-end labels! First impressions over, the scariest moment for most people in first meetings is the everlooming AWKWARD PAUSE. In the same league with such occurrences as the forgetting-to-hang-up-the-phone-and-then-talking-about-the-person-who-just-rang-you and the running-spastically-towards-a-departing-bus-only-to-have-it-pull-away-at-thelast-second moments, the awkward pause is something every sales person tries to avoid.

PRO TIP: Its a conversation guys! The person sitting across from you sipping their
skinny soy latte is as uncomfortable as you, and probably has a lot more in common with you than you realise. They also dont live and breathe work, and so you can have a conversation about other things before you bring business into it. The biggest challenge for someone who is new to the whole solo meeting game is that they completely psych themselves out beforehand, and think that to be a Meeting Master you must have some kind of super powers. Reality check Spiderman got bitten by a radioactive spider, the Hulk was exposed to toxic chemicals and Superman wasnt even from this planet. They are all admired but have nothing on Batman aka Bruce Wayne a normal human with no special powers who just happens to be the biggest bad-arse Super Hero ever. My point? Be relaxed, be normal and be a bad-arse anyway.

Facebook Official
Negotiations and Follow-up Meetings A wise person once told me, the fortune is in the follow-up. After attending The
One Day MBA last week I learnt an interesting statistic that being that 50% of people dont follow up after the initial meeting. What the hell guys?! If youve just invested in the first 3 stages of customer dating, or real life relationship dating, had a smashing time on your first date and maybe even snuck in a cheeky goodbye kiss, WHY WOULD YOU NOT CALL THE GIRL THE NEXT DAY? I suppose this is where real life dating and client relationship management differ, in that when you meet a gorgeous girl that youve wooed into a first date, all you can think about afterwards is how soon you can see her without seeming too eager! In sales, you hopefully have more than one client, and also the stresses of work, your personal life and everything else in life and so it is very easy to let follow-up slip. This is where I implore you to actually practise the analogy that I am using (that being Dating your Customers), and treat every relationship as a personal one, with a vested interest in each.

If you were wondering, yes I am encouraging you to practice polygamy in a

purely business sense! It is a bit of a juggle, and you cant favour one client more than the other (unless they are paying you more!), and it is exhausting but thats why they are paying you the big bucks right? When it comes to converting that initial meeting into a long-term client, or encouraging the first purchasing decision; loyalty is key. No girl is going to invite you over to Christmas dinner with her family if she doesnt trust you, and what you are offering her in return for choosing you. The same applies to customers, YOU are the face of your company and brand to them, and in most cases it is YOU they are buying. Unless you are niched so far into your market that you have developed an E-Book with a title longer than this blog, then guaranteed there are substitute products out there that would serve your customers needs as well, if not better, than what you are offering. So dont be in that 50% that dont follow-up, have a strategy (see Cirillo Hooper and Company strategy in Chapter 2) and stick to it, but make sure you are balancing your clientele equally, and dedicating enough time and coffee dates for all of them. The best way to do this is to implement Customer Relationship Management tools to organise, track and remind you of appointments and lag-time between customer conversions. This can be as simple as creating a Google Doc to track your individual clients at the varying stages of Dating, to combining an effective CRM with a calendar, salesforce-like revenue projections, and a plethora of other methods. Check out the online tools below to get you started! Base CRM - https://getbase.com/tour/ ScanBizCards Available from iTunes and Play Store Salesforce www.salesforce.com

White Chapel Wedding

First Sale/Contract

Getting the girl to the alter is probably one of the most rewarding, satisfying and
scariest moments of your life (not that Im speaking from experience thank you very much!) There will be lots of negotiation, a bit of fighting, and ultimately compromise before a happily ever after. It is exactly the same when dealing with clients, and converting them from pipeline into profit and beyond. The trick is to play the savvy groom; you might allow for the brides extended family to attend, buckle on the exuberant flower budget and sign off on the horse-drawn cart but you WILL get the epic Bucks show complete with topless waitresses and 30 year old tequila.

Its all about value add; the customer gets what they want and more, and you get
the sale and a long-term sustainable relationship. So what can you do to make sure your customer feels like they are getting more value than what they are paying you? A clich sales catch-phrase is under-promise and over-deliver, but its a clich for a reason! Although in my opinion you should agree on a contract and then over deliver anyway, and that value add can be achieved in a multitude of ways. The tipping point comes at the moment the violins start playing, and the guests turn expectantly towards the chapel entrance will the bride commit or will she bail? Do we need to prepare tissues or uncork our hipflasks to make it through the worlds awkwardness reception? Will the customer sign on the dotted line and make that crucial first purchasing decision or will they be eternal pipeline? There are a number of ways to cram value into your engagement with the client, but it is up to you to figure out what you can consistently provide, and what suits your clientele! For example, if you were in the professional services and advised clients on their business growth, instead of cutting a great meeting short at 11:59am on the dot, you would commit the necessary time needed to serve the client to the best of your abilities. A great way to provide your customer base with extra value is to make sure they are on your company mailing list, and always updated on the latest relevant seminars, networking events and information that the company comes across. This not only adds free value, but it strengths your relationship with the

client. Their top-of-mind-awareness of you means they will organically refer you, and
your services, to their friends when the opportunity presents itself. The value add alone may even be that little extra thing that converts them from pipeline to paying customer! Cirillo Hooper and Company likes to provide as much business and financial advice and value to our client base through knowledge sharing (a prime example is this free blog series written by an employee!), that way our customers know that we are in touch with them and what their business needs.

Living in Suburbia with 2.5 Kids

Partnership/Long-Term Clients

So youve got the client on board with your company, they are happy, your boss is
happy and your bank account is happy living the dream right? Well unfortunately the work doesnt stop there (unless you have dedicated Partnership Management Sales roles in your company) because now that you HAVE the customer, you need to KEEP the customer! Once the honeymoon period wears off and life starts moving, the investment and the risk increases, but the loyalty also grows. Customer loyalty is one of the most powerful assets in many service-related companies. Essentially the company is just a shell; if your key salesperson left then their clients would most likely follow them. As a salesperson you still need to be nourishing the relationship with the client, but it is easier said than done. Just like the boyfriend that used to buy you flowers every week and tell you how beautiful you were turns into the husband who forgets your birthday and never puts down the toilet seat; so do salespeople neglect their long-time clients. Dont fall into the trap of relying on your history with your customer, keep adding value and keep the relationship fresh! They will return the favour by becoming a bigger client and continually referring you. In order to spice up the love life between you and your long-term clients, I suggest you do a bit of Client Nurturing. There is no set way to do this, it just entails going above and beyond to support

your relationships, and really take it beyond the scope of purely business. Some of
the best real-life friendships come out of provider/customer liaisons, and to really bring this entire blog series into the light there are actually many times a purely business relationship turns into a lifetime of love and happiness! (Freaky right?) Some of the things we do at Cirillo Hooper and Company to nuture our clients include:

1. Driving to their businesses (sometimes an hour and a half away) in order to make our consults as convenient for the client as possible. 2. Going to band gigs of our clients that moonlight as rockstars. 3. Identifying the need for, and sourcing, young talent for the clients business in order to grow in a cost effective manner, as well as giving back to the education community.
And we do this all not for money, but because we actually give a damn! These are the customers that are going to stay with the firm for their entire life, because they trust and us and actually like us with every engagement the relationship deepens, and that is the beauty of Dating your Customers!

About the Author

Jemma is currently studying a Bachelors Degree of International Trade, Finance and Investment at The University of South Australia, and is in her final year. Through her love of travel and from her overseas exchange experiences to Kenya and France, Jemma joined the global youth-run organisation AIESEC and is currently the Regional Business Development Director for South Australia. Her interest in networking and meeting inspiring people led her to acquiring a position at Cirillo Hooper and Company. Her role sees her responsible for the implementation and project management of business development projects. Jemmas aim in life is to bridge the gap between University stud ents and the workforce, through various initiatives and training.

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