Achieving Great Client Relationships: Five Tips

Achieving and maintaining great client relationships is not necessarily easy.

However, as US leadership expert Allen Duet explains in a recent Entrepreneur article, the more effort you put into developing and maintaining these connections, the more significant the rewards.

To put this in perspective, Duet suggests five tips for achieving great client relationships.

These are:

1. Treat your customers as people, not numbers

It may sound obvious, but when dealing with customers always remember their names and, if possible, something that is unique to them. This could be the name of their partner, children, or other important facts. And by treating them the way you would like to be treated, you are already well on the way to achieving a great client relationship

2. Always be honest and authentic

Whether you are a leader, manager or employee, being authentic is all about presence and honesty; and this applies whether you are dealing with clients or people in general. It means ‘living in the moment’ with conviction and confidence and staying true to yourself. As an authentic person, you will also know how to put the people around you at ease, and make them feel at home

3. Be conscious of body language

Your body language is an instant giveaway as to how you feel, either consciously or subconsciously, when you are around clients. Always try to keep your arms and legs uncrossed, smile and make eye contact. This also helps ensure your client remembers interacting with you. And by being yourself and not overthinking things, you will soon find the relationship has a much greater chance of success

4. Listen to problems and solve them

When problems arise, it is important to deal with them quickly and effectively and to always let the client know you will happily ‘go the extra mile’ to deal with them. Take responsibility for any error, even if it is not necessarily your fault, and also take immediate steps to correct it. It may even be a good idea to offer the client a discount as reparation, especially if it was a bad mistake

5. Use Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Obviously, forming long-lasting, meaningful relationships is vital to any organisation's success, and EI can be an important tool in achieving this. Put simply, EI is not just how you feel but also how aware you are of your own state of mind, and that of those around you. Although finding an exact definition of Emotional Intelligence is not easy, one popular definition is: “Intelligently using emotion to produce a desired result.” World-renowned US author and psychologist Daniel Goleman is a firm believer in the use of EI in the workplace and how EI can significantly help the quality of our decisions, behaviour and responses: both towards each other and our clients.

Finally, research has shown a definite link between the relationships you form in your personal life, and the clients you deal with on a regular basis at work.

For example, if you have a solid circle of friends to rely on, this can be a great ‘launching pad’ for the interactions you have with your clients (and colleagues for that matter) at work.