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Home » Marketing Articles » Courting Customers From First Date To Marriage

Courting Customers - From First Date to Marriage

Landing a new client is like courting a potential spouse. The first date is usually a make or break situation and if the door is still open, the work has just begun. Like dating, you'd better give your prospect a pretty good reason to meet with you again, because there is usually more than one suitor.

Getting the Next Date

The key to getting that next date or meeting with a prospect is to deliver enough value to make a subsequent get-together attractive. At our company, our first meeting consists of a thorough questionnaire. Some of the questions we cover are:

What is the nature of the problem as you understand it?

What are the most urgent aspects of the problem?

What impact does this have on your organization?

Are you willing to make investments in technology when there is a clear ROI?

Who will be involved with making these decisions?

What other areas of your organization are you considering technology solutions?

What qualities do you look for in a vendor?

What will be the key factors driving your decision on this project?

We follow-up with a letter and summarize the client's problems, the cost of the problems and the solutions we can bring to solve them. This gives the client a clearly articulated assessment of their situation based on the information they've disclosed to us. It's often a more accurate and precise appraisal then before they met with us.

We try to complement their understanding of the problem with our understanding of the technology solutions. The prospect appreciates this new tool they have to move forward with solving the problems and we've gotten permission in almost every case to continue the conversation.

Making Your "Proposal"

The next step is a proposal, and we focus on educating the client throughout this process. We go beyond quoting a price; we send links to relevant articles, case studies and other content that expands the prospects understanding of their problems.

Many of these are included in the proposal as an appendix and we strive to deliver a document that is highly educational and includes diagrams and drawings to make the project more easily understood. Our strategy is that our prospect will use this as a tool to educate the internal decision making team, putting our companies name in front of them.

Once we get a preliminary approval on a contract, it's like getting engaged. The intent is to create a permanent relationship, but any number of circumstances could send the deal south. We go the extra mile in everything we do. And like marriage, the real effort begins when the contract is signed and the honeymoon is over.

We also pay attention to how we're being treated to ensure we're making the right choice for a partner as well; do they meet their commitments for returned phone calls, decisions, meeting times. We try and get a sense of the culture; do people like working there, are the people friendly, is there a sense of mission.

A Happy Marriage

Great relationships generally have a number of common elements:

Mutual respect and trust

Congruency, integrity and accountability

Common interests and goals

Common cultural backgrounds

Financial stability

Renew Your Vows

We're always focused on a long-term relationship, because it takes significantly less effort and cost to keep a client, then to gain a new one. Below is a list of things we strive to achieve in order to create a positive relationship with a client:

Deliver more value than we're paid for and do things right the first time.

Become a respected and valuable member of the internal team.

Do the little extras without expecting extra compensation.

Meet or exceed every commitment we've made in the contract, including delivering on schedule.

Adapt to the nuances of the client, rather than making them conform to ours.

Be accessible and create an exceptional communication channel with the client.

Be likable and anticipate the client's needs.

When we've done all this we're in a prime position to renew the vows for the next project. We've developed a quality relationship and the client has no reason to look elsewhere.

The Bottom Line

Whether you're getting married or acquiring a new customer, use common sense; find somebody that's compatible and attractive to you, consistently give more than you get and be a positive force in their lives.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

Personal Finance. Student Loans Debts Do Not Go On Your Credit Record.

Every time you apply for credit, for example a credit card or a loan, the lender will request to see your credit history from a credit reference agency. The information they hold is so detailed that there's really no need for us to fill out that long application form, because within a fraction of a second they can see all they need to know from Experian, Equifax or Callcredit, the three main credit reference agencies. You would be very surprised to see just how much they know about you.

Banks, building societies and other financial institutions providing credit have been passing on details of your financial transactions to the credit agencies. Every time you apply for a credit card, every time you miss a mortgage repayment â€" it gets noted. They know whether you pay the minimum or the balance each month, they even know details of your credit limit on each credit card. They also look to public records, the voters' roll and the public register of court actions because that is where all county court judgements are listed. It all happens automatically, and when your credit history is requested, the computer will provide a statistical analysis of your financial habits and provide an assessment of your suitability. It enables, the industry argues, lenders to make an accurate judgement about whether they should lend you money or not.

However, there is one piece of financial information that the credit agencies are not allowed to access, and that's the student loans. Despite the industry's remonstrations to the government, nothing has changed, and they are not allowed to access the information. The reason? Student loans constitute a debt to the taxpayer, they were not funded by commercial business.

Before September 1998, the student loan system worked like this: once graduates were working and earning the national average, which was £15,000 at the time, they had to repay their loan on a monthly basis by direct debit. 59,000 of those pre-1998 graduates still haven't started repaying their loan, and each has on average a debt of £2,750.

In September 1998, the student loan system changed, and the system remains the same to this day. Now, repayments are taken directly at source, straight from the salary in the same way as national insurance and income tax. This method has been a lot more successful.

The lending industry is not happy about the student loan situation, their main argument being that they need to know, when considering an application for credit, if the applicant has extra financial responsibilities. The introduction of top-up fees resulted in increasingly large student debts, and as the post-1998 loans have to be paid off at a rate of 9% of the graduate's income once it has reached £15,000, it is a large portion of income to lose.

The Association Consumer Credit Counselling Service made the following statement: "Knowing whether a young person has a student loan and whether it is being paid back, is useful." So they are in agreement with the lenders.

The Citizens Advice Bureau is also keen to have the information made public, because they feel that graduates could be taking on too much debt, and if lenders could see their student loans, they would ensure that graduates are not given the ability to borrow beyond their means.

However, the Department for Education and Skills is showing no signs of wavering on its decision to keep individuals' debts to the Student Loan Company private.

For the foreseeable future â€" the situation will remain the same and student loans information will be inaccessible to the credit industry.