Do You Like Your Customers?

by Kenneth Vogt⁽³⁾
Content Crooner Inc.

You have passion for your industry, you love your company and you live for your job. But do you like your customers? Part of creating a rewarding career is working to bring a good synergy to everything in your professional world. Remember that your company is not an island. Without your vendors, competition and clients, your company would not even exist. It helps to keep things in perspective and develop a good understanding of where your priorities lie. That includes creating a good understanding of how to treat the relationship you have with your customers.

Over time, it is common for business people to become personally close with their clients. Personal milestones are shared, Christmas cards are sent and there may even be the occasional invitation to a daughter's wedding. But when you start to personally like your clients so much that you are willing to do personal favors to maintain their business, then you are starting to cross a line.

Every good business person knows that a positive customer relationship is the easiest to maintain. There is no arguing and the steady stream of revenue helps pad your company's bottom line. But customers are in it for themselves just as much as they are in it to do business with you. Whenever people start to blur that line between business and personal feelings and start to think that they like their customers, then the pain of losing that customer becomes that much more intense.

In the world of business you need to respect your customers, be able to communicate with your customers and always find ways to develop a win-win situation between your company and your customers. But there is nothing that says that you have to like your customers either on a personal level or a professional level. You like your customers' money, and that is what you should be focused on.

Think about it. Everything that you do when maintaining an account centers around making sure that the customer pays his bills and that you are invited to take part in any new opportunities that your client has. You can hang up the phone and talk about your client's parents as being residents of the local zoo if you want. But, of course, you would never do that when the phone is still to your ear.

When you have some spare time, start to take an inventory of the interaction you have had with your best clients. How many times have your best clients tried to get more out of you simply because you have a good personal relationship? It happens, and it happens all the time. An objective inventory of that relationship will reveal more favors done for the client than you would probably want to admit. What is the reward? The reward is more business for your company. But is it worth it?

Do you think your customers will stay with your company if your company is rocked by a major scandal? Some would stay while others would jump ship. In that case, it does not matter how much you like them or they like you.

So when you are trying to figure out if you like your clients or not, you need to ask the right questions. Do you respect your clients? Are you willing to work hard to maintain their business? Do you feel respected by your clients? If you can answer yes to these questions, then it doesn't matter if you like your customers at all. All that matters is that you do the right things to keep the revenue rolling in.

Kenneth Vogt is CEO of Content Crooner, a high quality content distribution service that gets you more targeted web traffic. Discover how to create quality content that drives targeted traffic to your web site in our free report.

Article submitted Monday, December 05, 2011 & read 3 times.

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