Client Relationships Are Destinations In The Customer Integration Journey.

Customer integration shows your commitment to be a personal resource & move beyond share-of-wallet tactics to strategic client relationships. It means helping clients choose & implement personal optimizations to establish your loyalty to them. Until then, don’t expect customer loyalty.

Customer integration offers are: ‘Here’s what you need to __.’ Client relationship offers are: ‘This is how we’ll __ together.’

Blog readers vary in knowledge, so we're reinforcing customer integration while setting our vision to explore horizons. You should set customers’ visions to find new advantages.

To some extent, you can optimize current methods but when you’re close to peak performance, further advancement is limited.

As you optimize a marketing offer & method, you’ll need other offers & methods to appeal to other consumers. You’re more apt to increase profits with sales to customers who respond to additional offers & methods. Until you explore beyond your current reach, you won’t know how much more success is available or how to achieve it.

Since I’m proposing what’s unfamiliar to you, you think about risk because you haven’t implemented customer integration. Consider consumers’ risk perceptions. If you refuse to integrate your store into their lives to make offers less risky & more fulfilling for them, how can you expect them to initiate integration?

If you refuse to reach out further to consumers, don’t expect them to reach further to you. Customer integration shows you’re reaching out to help them instead of grabbing their wallets.

After you implement & optimize customer integration, you’ll transition beyond reaching out. You’ll stand out where customers want to be & they’ll join you. When you’re standing with customers, you can form client relationships.

Since June 2022, we've used Marshall Goldsmith’s bear salmon analogy to avoid success delusion. Goldsmith uses personal coaching to explore successful causes & effects.

Quotes From WHAT GOT YOU HERE WON'T GET YOU THERE:

“Successful people have a unique distaste for feeling controlled or manipulated. Even when I’ve gotten the greatest advance build-up as someone who can help people change for the better - in other words, I’m effective at helping - I still meet resistance. I have now made peace with the fact that I cannot make people change. I can only help them get better at what they choose to change.”

“People will do something - including changing their behavior - only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.”

Which Advantages Do People Value?

Let’s explore how client relationships build advantages on the customer integration foundation. Both models increase retailers' understanding of consumers' current 'HERE’ plus help customers realize why 'THERE’ is a more advantageous destination.

Retailers can be like students' guidance counselors by building insights to create & reach destinations. Help clients learn how to maintain progress while expanding horizons.

Consumers want benefits others enjoy but impractically deplete resources trying to get ‘there’. Help customers understand when somebody else’s ‘there’ isn’t suitable. Advantage offers include reviewing goals & conditions to develop a personal advantageous ‘THERE’ so costs are justified with increased positives &/or decreased negatives.

It includes describing how clients should fully own/maintain advantages of being 'THERE'.

'Client' implies relationship since clients have relationships preferably with fiduciary-like providers who serve based first on creating client advantages.

By relating to advantages, people form 'relationships' when things are gained, so losses are felt physically & emotionally.

Though healthy interpersonal relationships include sacrifices, advantages can equal or exceed sacrifice costs. Insightful information gives people perspectives for perceiving & comparing advantages & costs.

Insightful AIDA offers bring Awareness/Attention leading to Interest, building to Desire & inspiring purchase Actions. Client relationships justify purchases with guidance for productive actions.

Short-term Goals Long-term Costs

Salmon sacrifice themselves to spawn 'THERE' because they relate to actions & locations but not to results of hatchlings surviving & swimming to oceans/lakes. Adult salmons' struggles seem to indicate dedication to offspring but suffering is detrimental.

By equalizing sacrifices & self-preservation, adults could survive to warn offspring about those dammed rivers & bears. Warnings & workarounds strengthen individuals plus their relationships. Client relationships form bonds of interdependent help because each contribution makes advantages for all involved.

Discounters relate to profitable sales, so there's little dedication to customers because service is considered a cost. Discounters may claim to serve customers, but how do they define “service”? Investors grab profits instead of reinvesting in product & service quality.

Customer integration service includes matching products & actions with goals.

Example: Toddlers’ parents build adaptable recreation rooms to last long enough for teenagers to enjoy. Buildings should be top quality. Furniture & equipment should be safe even if units wear out in a few years because children will want age-appropriate units. Teenagers will probably reject formerly-favorite kiddy-size furniture & toys. Temporary decorations would fit teenagers’ evolving ‘relationship’ with their long-lasting 'clubhouse'.

Are customers’ desires for change & consistency realistic based on evolving product technology & probable developments? If customers’ desire & priority fulfillments require cooperation, which explanations could create understanding with those who can add resources & share benefits? How can you help customers persuade others to cooperate?

Relationships are based on similar priorities even if members don't prioritize equally.

Example: Greenhouse operators' dedication to beautifying cities might be a #2 priority, but citizen volunteers might prioritize public flowers at #8. Retailers could sell plants & materials at cost for civic projects & hope people pay full price for home projects. If volunteers are too tired to maintain civic & home projects, declining quality could discourage participation. Volunteers could share dedication to goal achievement but not commitment to maintenance.

Client relationships should include knowledge for realistic prioritization according to requirements & resources. Do your best to help clients preserve advantages as worthwhile investments.

If priorities & desires change, what do those changes indicate about goal achievements that established value? Do life changes or personal resource shortages force clients to abandon achievements? Do clients want to reduce activities but preserve property & equipment value? What do clients need for transitioning to other advantages? If people can't store & maintain equipment, do you offer maintenance, storage or rentals?

It's easy to start enthusiastically when people realize what their commitments can bring, but would requirements be too burdensome?

Consultation Example: 'You can start with in-stock products. Step #3 requires ordering (products). Rainy weather might strike anytime after (products) arrive. You'd have to dedicate time &energy to rush through remaining steps. I'll place the order if you're sure you can make it work.'

Consultations show your attention-to-detail.

Retailers' inattention or attention-to-detail indicates to consumers whether relationships or transactions are worthwhile.

Relationships Should Be More Valuable Than Transactions for Retailers & Clients.

I agree with Jay Abraham about serving clients instead of attracting tactical, transactional customers, especially if transactions are reactive instead of preventative & progressive. Relationships involve interactions, not just transactions.

Ideally, prevention & progress are planned. If you want clients more than customers, justify your role in clients' planning.

Jay used The Greek Parthenon analogy for supporting businesses with multiple pillars/methods. Customer integration builds powerful pillars.

Pillar & relationship combinations require architecture/planning to build & position pillars advantageously.

We can add "Positioning" by Al Ries & Jack Trout because you should position your business in people's minds & solidly position it in people's lives. If your advantageous business is removed, people's lives won't be complete & could be unsteady.

People happily think problems are over even if relief is temporary. It's important to differentiate preliminary & long-term results so customers don't stop too soon. Which analogies & comparisons demonstrate importance of next level results?

Offer Example: 'After last month's storm, (Store) has filled orders for (benefits). Since major damage & risks are reduced, it's time to finish with customized repairs. Stopping now would be like relying on temporary spare tires for your car. You need full-size replacements. At (Store), let's personalize product & method choices for your current & emerging needs so you'll avoid stresses of searching for & comparing important information plus deciding on options under pressure of approaching problems.'

Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.

Copyright 2023 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.

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