Colleen’s Blog

You will often hear that the best way to maintain and grow your current client base is to ensure that you have the best product on the market, or the best customer service. While these factors surely contribute to client success and loyalty, they are hardly the most important factors. The best way to create client loyalty is by building and maintaining trust. ← Click To Tweet If you have average products and customer service yet you have built trust with your client, the likelihood is that they will still want to work with you. However, even with the best products on the market, you will be unable to maintain and grow your current client relationships if your clients do not trust you. There are two keys to building and maintaining trust with your clients. They are so simple, but they are often overlooked!

How long do you typically take to get back to a prospect upon receiving an inquiry from them? Anything longer than 24 hours is too long. Your customers are busy people - by taking too long to respond you’re letting go of an otherwise potentially easy sale. ← Click To Tweet The number of salespeople and organizations who let days or weeks pass before responding to an inquiry is absolutely staggering. This type of behavior not only breaks several rules in sales etiquette but also displays a complete lack of professional etiquette as well. For example: I once sent an inquiry to a company about buying a tradeshow booth. I expressed a strong interest in their product and indicated that I simply needed a few pieces of information before making a purchase. I expected a prompt reply due to my clear readiness to buy their product.