How To Avoid the Most Common Relationship Management Errors
Subscribe to Articles
A huge part of the business networking process is to grow business collaboration and create strategic relationships. A new business connection can be precarious at first. While the first impression of your new connection is still fresh, you must avoid these common business network relationship mistakes.
Common Business Relationship Mistakes
Error: Too Much Friction in the Sales Process
Nothing will turn off that new lead more than a tumultuous sales process. No one likes being passed around to different salespeople on a call when you have an issue with a product or service. Doing it this way can greatly damage your brand new business-to-business network connection.
How To Avoid It:
For efficiency’s sake, it is best to have one experienced salesperson handle all the stages of the sales process for each lead. This experienced salesperson will be able to sort out the potential leads from the stale ones. Another way to avoid this mistake is to increase training and communication between the sales teams. These may be two-person teams consisting of a junior and a senior salesperson. This helps create strong sales management, low staff turnover, and rigorous sales.
Error: Following Up Too Slowly
It is unacceptable to wait several days for a follow-up contact. We are all busy and we all meet many people every day, but so do your connections. One way to cause a new connection to go from hot to cold is to fail to cultivate the new relationship right away. It won’t take long for the relationship to go from business collaboration to just another contact on the list.
How To Avoid It:
A quick follow-up to all connections should happen as soon as possible after the initial meeting. It can be as simple as a quick greeting on a social media message platform, or an email fully introducing you and your business. If you have something to share, such as an industry newsletter or a resource list, include it in the email to add value to the connection.
Error: More Lead Generation than Brand Credibility
Many people are so fixated on growing their business connections that they neglect promoting brand credibility. You do not want to be aggressive with accumulating connections to the point that you turn them off, both to you and your business. If your brand is unknown in the market, it will be a long and hard battle to get it to grow.
How To Avoid It:
Start out planning lead generation strategies and combine them with brand building. If you implement too much lead generation but neglect to equally work on the brand building, you may not be happy with the results. Gathering the leads is the easier part of the plan. But, if these new leads do not connect with your brand, they may drop you and go to the competitor’s site. This is why you must invest in building your brand credibility.
Error: Not Utilizing Your Marketing Department
If sales slow down, your prospects may be hesitant to buy right away. When your company does quite a bit of lead generation, it will take a great deal of time to nurture these leads. The problem develops when the salespeople become in charge of nurturing the leads. This takes away from their time working on the sales in progress.
How To Avoid It:
One of the primary functions of any marketing department is nurturing new clients. Have your marketing department handle everything involved with nurturing your leads until they are ready to buy.
Error: Failing to Deliver Value with Every Interaction
When networking, people connect over some common ground. People want to interact with someone that they can view as an advisor or mentor position in their industry. That is why networking without delivering some value to the relationship is a mistake.
How To Avoid It:
Give your connections something to take away from every meeting, post, or message. When you are trying to make new connections, give them a fact or some information that will keep them interested in you and your business.
Business-to-business relationship management is an extremely important part of growing your business. PS Inc can help with all your relationship management needs. Contact us today to get started.