10 Steps to Building Trust in Your Business Relationships
January 17, 2009 by Christian · View Comments
Martin Haworth writes, there are some simple things you can do with your people to ensure that they start to trust you. As a letter from Mike Emmott of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the UK says, in April 2005’s UK Management Today says:-
“Our surveys show that only one in four employees trust senior management to look after their interests”
Is that not appalling? How on earth can businesses develop, survive and above all hang onto their best people if they are seen to be untrustworthy?
It’s horrible.
There is an article below which talks a little about ‘Rapport Building’, but to supplement that, here are Ten Steps to help you build trust with your people.
- Keep Your Promises
- Never Tell Lies
- Keep Confidences
- Communicate as Fully as Possible
- Have No Favorites
- Challenge the Behaviour – Not the Person
- Follow Through
- Listen Attentively
- Forgive Mistakes
- Don’t Talk Behind Backs
If you can’t keep a promise, then don’t make it in the first place – it is a big negative emotion being let down in this way.
Why would you? And if you have to, it’s much, much more about you. Your people will really lose faith in you fast.
Sometimes people will tell you things that they don’t want broadcast – they need you to hear them sometimes. But keep it to yourself. Do not be the instigator of gossip and rumor.
Keep as little from your people as you can. Communicate as openly as possible. Sometimes you have to hold some information back – it happens, but think really carefully about it.
Treat all of your people equally and show no favorites. I know this is tough – I found it tough, but it needs to be right. Have agreed principles and standards that everyone works to – sorry, but no exceptions.
People make mistakes, do things wrong and need to be told. It’s the thing they did, not the person they are. “You’re useless”, is not a good way to build trust, but, “That wasn’t what I would expect of you usually, tell me more about what happened”, works better.
If you say you are going to do something. Do it! Your people will love that you do what you say (or apologies at least if you find you can’t). And it sets a great example.
There’s a whole piece about this, but safe to say if you don’t pay attention to people fully, they will not trust you. It’s rude and it diminishes the relationship.
Be generous. It is a value-creating action. People hate to get things wrong – they expect a ‘bollocking’ (as they say!). Help them with a learning from the mistake. “What might you do next time?”, is far more valuable.
If you do this with anyone, they will always wonder what you say about them when they aren’t there – and what are they saying about you – it’s a bad habit.
Building trust is vital if you, your people and your business are going to excel. Working on it is just a discipline. These points will help you.
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Key Points to a Collaboration Marketing Strategy and How It Will Benefit Your Business
July 11, 2008 by Christian · View Comments
While a collaboration marketing strategy may not be ideal for every business, there are several benefits to consider. It is a mechanism with which to build strong relationships with both customers and business.
Relationships have always been a cornerstone of effective marketing, and collaboration marketing is a way to foster trust and build strong alliances. The following are a few ways in which a collaboration marketing strategy will benefit your business.
Take Advantage of Size Economics
Often, though not always, you can enjoy significant cost savings by collaborating with other businesses, which require the same supplies that you do. In this way, you may be able to command a higher market price for your product.
Maintain a Steady Flow of Product
Having your product readily available at the time your customer wants to buy it is essential for a successful business. Even the most popular products will quickly lose their market share if they’re not available when the customer wants them. By collaborating with others in your industry, you can be certain to always service your customers in a timely manner. The collaboration ultimately benefits all parties involved.
Preserve an Existing Market
As the structure of business changes, there is much concern about the disappearance of local markets in favor of global markets and outsourcing to other countries. A collaboration of small businesses in local markets can protect these smaller markets and help sustain the existence of small independent businesses.
Create a New Market
There are two sides to every market: suppliers who offer a product to sell and customers who are looking for the product to buy. Sometimes, potentially viable markets fail to develop if a minimum volume cannot be reached. If several small businesses are struggling to sustain enough customers, collaborating with other business owners may create a way to develop a niche market for your products, allowing you and your contemporaries to stay afloat in a situation where that may otherwise have been difficult.
Gain Access to Knowledge and Professional Expertise
Access to business owners who have knowledge in areas in which you may not be an expert is one of the most important and beneficial aspects to collaboration marketing. Everyone has different skill sets and areas of expertise. By collaborating with businesses and professionals who have strengths and capabilities in areas where you are weaker, and vice versa, will ultimately benefit and create stronger and more thriving individual businesses.
The collaboration marketing strategy is a potentially vast tool to help you expand and sustain a strong business. There are many applications of collaboration marketing to consider, and if initially you don’t feel it will be a good fit for your business, a closer look at the benefits of such a model may quickly convince you otherwise.
Collaboration Marketing for Your Business
May 9, 2008 by Christian · View Comments
Developing a strategic marketing plan is important to raise awareness for your business. If consumers don’t know about your fabulous product, it is very difficult for them to buy it! The art of successful marketing is largely about letting the public know how to find you.
For online business, there are a variety of creative ways to do this: direct email, banner ads, pop-up ads all of which are successful and strategic tools. A rather new idea in Internet marketing is called collaboration marketing, an understanding of which will help develop a complete marketing strategy.
What is collaboration marketing?
In essence, collaboration marketing focuses on directly attracting customers to your site, rather than intercepting them with traditional advertising methods. In traditional advertising, customers are somewhat randomly drawn to your business. For instance, if they happen to see an enticing advertisement, and happen to click on it, they may find their way to your website and business. This is proven and effective marketing tool, but to find an edge in business, it is important to cultivate new and creative ways to raise awareness for your business.
How does collaboration marketing work?
Collaboration marketing attracts customers by becoming more and more helpful to them, in a sense a sort of personalized service. This type of marketing targets customers both in terms of evaluating potential new products and services that may be of interest to them, and working with them to get more value from products and services they have already purchased.
This may sound like a lot of work, but these goals can be obtained through straightforward processes that will target a large group of customers at one time. Personalized service need not be personal service. Collaboration marketing challenges the idea of a one to one personalized service with the refreshing view of many to one to one types of marketing.
Push vs. Pull
Collaboration marketing works by mobilizing a broad range of relevant third party marketers to add value to the customer relationship. These marketers make resources and relationships available to the customer that will enhance the products the customer has already purchased, thus creating a need and loyalty to the company of previous purchases. This is a pull approach where the marketer becomes useful to the customer so the customer then seeks out the marketer, rather than other types of marketing that seek to push a customer towards their product by invading email and blasting out ads.
Certainly, traditional modes of marketing are effective. Many types of marketing have been successfully implemented for decades. But the art of successful marketing and strategic marketing is about finding an edge and developing a strategy that will get you noticed and attract customers to the products and services that you offer. Collaboration Marketing should not be the only type of marketing you implement for a successful strategy, but is another piece to add to your repertoire to give you the business edge that will get you noticed and helps make your business a success.
Collaboration Marketing: Hassle-Free Brand Ambassadors to Attract New Clients
January 8, 2008 by Christian · View Comments
The age old adage pertaining to “word of mouth” advertising still holds true, “Make a customer happy, and he will tell one other person; make the customer unhappy, and he will tell 20 others”. However, with the power of the internet, this impact has grown exponentially, as word of mouth published in blogs, websites, and community bulletin boards are read by millions of eyes, far exceeding the physical limitations of actually verbally telling someone about a company.
Buying the power of “Word of Mouth”
With that said, corporations continue to tap into word of mouth advertising, but on a larger World Wide Web level. According to PQ Media’s “word of mouth” marketing forecast, companies are continuously increasing their spending on citizen marketing, growing from $980 million in 2006 to $1 billion in 2007. With the weakening of the economy and signs of a continued recession for 2009, expect these spending numbers to grow at greater rates. In fact, by 2011, it is anticipated that this marketing figure will grow to approximately $4 billion.
Fortune 500 companies are cashing in on the power of citizen marketing through brand ambassadors. Formerly considered a spokesperson or token PR individual, today’s brand ambassador is equipped with the power of Web 2.0, thus reaching an exponentially larger audience.
Just to name a few, Jet Blue, Macy’s, and Sony have launched rigorous marketing campaigns based upon brand ambassadors, who are everyday citizens armed with word of mouth recommendations. For example, Sony named 25 brand ambassadors to promote their new digital cameras. Armed with the technology, these brand ambassadors were given the digital cameras, encouraged to take photos of their every day activities and blog their perspectives.
Citizen Marketing levels the playing field
This unique marketing strategy is not limited to the big corporations. In fact, a small business can take advantage of this marketing strategy as effectively as Fortune 500 companies. With the internet and the power of viral word of mouth marketing, a small business can make as much of a splash as Sony.
However, while brand ambassadors can be a tremendous asset to a corporation’s marketing efforts, managing them is not necessarily an easy task. In order to successfully execute a citizen marketing campaign, a company must fully select, train, and manage individuals who will be effective brand ambassadors, instead of simply paid endorsers. In addition, not all business models are suited for the brand ambassador strategy.
Collaboration Marketing: Hassle-free Brand Ambassadors
With that said, any business can take the fundamental benefits of brand ambassadors, word of mouth advertising, and citizen marketing, and apply them to a collaborative marketing strategy. A collaborative marketing strategy shares the fundamental core of citizen marketing, but is much easier to implement and manage. You still achieve the same benefits of having brand ambassadors, which provides credibility and knowledge to the marketplace, without the hassles of training and managing a team of citizens.
To find a collaborative marketing partnership that will offer you the same rewards as a brand ambassador and word of mouth campaign, it is important to locate a company that has credibility and sway with its customer base. Without a credible, interactive relationship with their clients, their “word of mouth” recommendations are likely to fall to the wayside, which does not necessarily bode well for your company’s reputation. Yet, the effort is certainly worth the results, as a synergistic collaborative marketing relationship is likely to open your business to exponentially larger customer base and revenues.
Social Networking Demonstrates Power of Collaboration Marketing
January 6, 2008 by Christian · View Comments
The incredible popularity of social networking sites, such as FaceBook, MySpace, and Yelp, demonstrate that individuals are collectively looking for ways to connect with each other. Yelp, a popular social networking recommendation site, is based solely upon individuals sharing their own opinions, experiences, and insights regarding local businesses and activities.
Businesses are social too.
And businesses are jumping in on the social networking trend. According to the Institute for Corporate Productivity, 65% of business professionals utilize social networking websites, while 55% of business professionals utilize social networking web sites to share their “best practices” and experiences with their colleagues. Thus, the question remains – how does social networking relate to collaboration marketing?
Collaboration Marketing: the Sibling to Social Networking
An effective collaboration marketing strategy is akin to the fundamental popularity of social networking websites. Individuals, as well as small businesses, are looking to utilize the internet as a wealth of knowledge. The best way to research a company, product, or even supermarket is to ask someone who has experienced it. Thus, social networking sites, such as Yelp, are abounding with individuals asking for advice and recommendations.
This is where collaboration marketing becomes powerful and strikes the core need for individuals to garner “first hand” advice regarding the products and services they should purchase. Therefore, any successful collaboration marketing campaign utilizes the trust built between the company and its client base to promote with credibility.
Successfully bridging the Business and Community Relationship
However, there is a fine line that must be walked in collaboration marketing, which is parallel to marketing efforts through social networking sites. In a relationship where trust and credibility play important roles in the end user’s buying decision, it is critical that the sense of “community” be developed. If the customer believes that the company is not contributing to the relationship or worse yet, are exploiting the customer, then the efforts become negative.
Therefore, when you are formulating your collaboration marketing strategy, it is absolutely essential to ensure that the “recommendation” does not appear exploitative or too aggressive. In fact, the more “real” the recommendation sounds, such as the use of minor critiques, the more likely the customers will trust the recommendation and convert into a paying client. Another effective strategy is to couple the recommendation with a discount, which prompts the end users to believe that indeed, the recommendation is in their very best interest.
Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.
To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report
