Relationship Marketing
aka "Why should I bother with a prospect who is not interested in my services?"
Pop quiz!
You just got off the phone with a prospect who tells you, "We're not hiring right now, check back with me toward the end of the year." Do youÂ…
A) Dismiss this person as a dead prospect and delete them from your list?
B) Make a note in your schedule to follow up in six months?
C) Ask the prospect for permission to stay in touch, and then add that person to your company's relationship marketing process?
Hopefully, you answered C. And if you're asking yourself, "What's a Relationship Marketing process?", then you'll definitely want to read on.
Relationship Marketing 101
In simple terms, relationship marketing is a process of nurturing sales leads. It's a systematic plan that ensures you never neglect a single prospect--or client. A well-designed relationship marketing plan adds value, educates, strengthens your positioning, builds trust and keeps you top-of-mind.
Have you ever sent a prospect a Happy Birthday note or forwarded an article about employment law to a client or prospect? If so, you have done a little relationship marketing. The only difference between these activities and a true relationship marketing process is that a true process is not ad-hoc. It's a deliberate, planned series of activities designed to give you a greater chance at winning--and retaining an employer's business.
We all know that clients are not created overnight. It takes many contacts over several weeks, months and even years for prospects to turn into clients. And that's where relationship marketing comes in; it's all about persistence. Relationship marketing keeps you top-of-mind until the prospect is ready to buy.
To better understand the value of Relationship Marketing, let's break it down into two groups: your clients and prospects.
Nurturing Staffing Clients
Most staffing firms, especially in this economy, are focused on finding new clients. While new business development is certainly a necessary tactic, too often we forget the importance of continuing to nurture our existing clients. After all, isn't it easier to get business from someone you already know?
Here are just a few of the ways you can use relationship marketing with your current clients:
- Deepen relationships with existing contacts
Use repeated content to strengthen personal bonds and reduce the chance that your competitors will be able to steal business away.
- Broaden relationships with new contacts
Expand your reach into new divisions and new departments. Relationship marketing is an ideal tool for opening doors and nurturing relationships with these people.
- Encourage repeated use of your services
Teach people all the reasons why, when and how to use your services. The more educated your clients are, the more value they will see in your services.
- Cross-sell clients on other services they may not be using
Every company is best known for the first thing they sold. If you provided industrial staffing first, you're an industrial staffing specialist. Relationship marketing is an ideal way to constantly remind clients about all the services you offer.
Nurturing Prospects
There is no such thing as a dead prospect! Well, almost no such thing. Every sales person knows that you have to hear "no" several times before you get to "yes." But despite this fact, more than 90% of sales people give up on prospects within four attempts!
Even if the client tells you they are not interested or never use staffing services, they still need to be nurtured. Remember, staffing needs can occur at any time, and when they do, you want to be the company they call first!
By nurturing your prospects you will:
- Stay top-of-mind with decision-makers
- Differentiate your business from the competition (or current supplier)
- Teach people how and why to use your services
- Build trust and credibility
- Maximize the productivity of your sales reps
Relationship marketing can virtually eliminate the need to make cold calls. It can be used to capture the attention of the people you most want to reach, educate them about the unique value you can offer, and position your firm as the most qualified to deliver that value.
Relationship marketing warms prospects to your calls. It gives people a reason to want to speak with you (so you don't come off as the 5th staffing firm to call this week), and just as importantly, it can provide a topic for a very meaningful first conversation.
Tactics: Putting Relationship Marketing into Action
Let's take a look at some of the tactics that you can use to build a Relationship Marketing process with your clients and prospects:
- Add value by sharing educational information
Education is an extremely powerful sales tool. Not only does it teach people more about the value of your services, it also positions you as an expert. Education can be as simple as forwarding links to articles on topics your clients would be interested in or taking it to the next level and developing your own newsletter.
Cheap plug time! Our HaleyMail service is an incredibly powerful system of email, drop offs and web content, specifically designed to educate clients and prospects about the value of staffing--if you'd like to know more, call us! 1.888.696.2000.
- Show clients how to get the best results from your services
Have you recently helped a client improve productivity or lower costs by using your services? Share a success story! Case studies and success stories demonstrate the real value your services offer, and they get people thinking about new ways to work with you.
When writing case studies, we recommend the Problem, Solution, Result format. Describe the problem your client was having, the solution your firm developed, and the overall results of the program. Remember, numbers are always more impactful, so try to be as specific as you can when describing the results you delivered (e.g., our solution helped increase productivity 25%).
- Use surveys to discover opportunities for improvement
Let's face it, most clients will not be 100% honest with you. If they like you, they don't want to say anything bad about your services. And if they are unhappy, they're more likely to just stop using your firm than to provide feedback. To get honest input--and solidify relationships, survey your clients and prospects.
Surveys are an ideal tool for evaluating your company and learning about issues and opportunities. A well-designed survey shows people that you care about your clients and that you're interested in their challenges and concerns.
- Get them to join the club
Make your clients and prospects feel special by offering them access to information that others don't have. As an example, we had a client that did a monthly email of their top candidates. Rather than just blasting it out to the world, we invited clients and prospects to receive this special list. We let them know that once each month we would share a list of truly exceptional candidates that had just come into the job market. We made people feel special by providing first access to this staffing firm's cream of the crop talent.
- Create interest with attention grabbing packages and irresistible offers
Before you nurture relationships, you still have to get people's attention. And direct mail is one of the most powerful tools for capturing attention. The key is to be bold, take a few risks, and be persistent.
One of the most successful direct mail pieces we ever designed consisted of a black box that contained a stuffed donkey holding a card with the message, "Hiring Is A Pain In The Ass." Other effective direct mail campaigns have included sales letters in FedEx envelopes, and even multi-step postcard campaigns that repeated one core message through a series of six or more postcards.
Of course, direct mail works best when there is a strong call to action--an irresistible offer. Your goal in relationship marketing is to create a dialogue with your prospects, and step one is to get people to contact you. Having a strong offer, like a free salary guide or other exceptional piece of educational content, will help you maximize the conversion of cold leads to warm prospects.
Want 70 ideas for offers? Download our marketing best practices guide. (http://www.haleymarketing.com/marketingguide)
- Don't make it all about staffing
If you want to build relationships, don't sell all the time! It's an old but true cliché, people love to buy, but they hate to be sold. Think about how many calls and emails your prospects receive asking them about their staffing needs. We know from our research and experience--they hate these calls!
To stand out from the crowd, don't sound like everyone else. Instead of focusing on staffing issues, try sending something fun that will take the recipient's mind off their problems. Not too long ago, we had a client who told us a story about a prospect that had been on their mailing list for more than 2 years with no response. Then this staffing firm sent out a Happy 4th of July mailing, and within an hour, the prospect called and said, "We're ready to talk."
Relationships Are a Long-term Investment
While it usually doesn't take two years to break the ice with a prospect, relationships do take time to nurture. But with a systematic process in place, relationship marketing can ensure that no client, prospect or candidate is ever forgotten. Relationship marketing can help you capture attention and create interest in your services, educate people about the value you offer, position you as an expert, build trust, and keep you top-of-mind until a staffing need arises.
Relationship Marketing keeps your name, logo, and message in front of your clients and prospects on a regular basis. Whether it's through email, direct mail, social media, or the telephone, having a systematic process is the key to building long-term and profitable relationships. |
