The Customer Relationship Marketing

Companies use customer relationship marketing or CRM to mercilessly besiege their customers into spending more money.  Customer relationship marketing needs an overhaul. When is the last time you received a piece of mail that didn’t include a “special offer” for our valued customers? Or “limited time offer” or “special customer preview.” Enough!

Let’s take a fresh look at this and break it down. Customers are the lifeblood of your business and they’re ones that pay for your goods and services instead using your competitors. The person who has a choice many choices in your category. The person you wouldn’t know if you bumped into him on the street. Building a “relationship” with your customer is where you need to start. Perhaps talking with your customers rather than at them. Maybe engaging them in an exchange of ideas and finding out their thoughts as opposed to the imposition of your wants. No different than any other relationship. The successful ones thrive on an honest open exchange, without a “limited time offer” or a discount attached to it. It gets pretty transparent after a while. Remember just like clients, sometimes customers have good ideas too. Asking for customer feedback is an excellent way to reach out to our customers. It’s about having a dialogue with them rather than a monologue.

I have always been criticized about my writing style because it’s too informal or too conversational. How much stronger would your business be if you were able to “chat” with your prospects as opposed to burying them in irrelevant rhetoric. As Marketers, we tend to suffer from the fear of “information under load” much like attorneys who will never use fifty words where a thousand will do. The bottom line is that you need to do a little more listening and a lot less talking. That would be the “relationship” part.

–Richie