The relationship ladder

- As long as I have been working in financial service, I have heard leaders talking about the importance of building relationships with customers. That you need to do more than just take the customer's order. You need to expand the conversation and deepen the relationship. They're absolutely right. Yet to this day, despite focusing on it, most financial institutions struggle to strengthen that customer bond. They struggle to be proactive, anticipating customer needs. The very first financial services training course I took walked me through one of the most powerful explanations of what it takes to truly build relationships. My instructor used what is known as a relationship ladder, a visual thought process you can actually work through as a salesperson to better understand how to move a suspect all the way through to advocate. I have a copy for you in the exercise files, to take a moment and download it now. Now let's walk through it together. The bottom rung is suspects, individuals that aren't even on your radar. You have not thought about them or met them. Next are your prospects. They're qualified to be customers and you either have your eye on them or are actively working to get their business. Then you have your customers. This is where things get interesting. Customers only have one or two products or service with you, so technically, even though we call them customers, they are only at the very beginning of the relationship process. When customers become clients, they have a depth of products and services, and you're having better conversations, being more proactive, and forming a stronger bond. Last but definitely not least are advocates. Here you're providing so much value to your clients that they not only want to do more business with you, they wanno encourage their friends and family to do business with you too. Okay, so here's an easy question. Whatta you think your goal is with this relationship ladder? You guessed it: to move people up the ladder to advocate status. Take a few moments and in each stage of the ladder, write down one or two ways you can move your customers to the next level. In other words, what specifically do you do to move a suspect to a prospect or a customer to a client. I love this exercise because it keeps me mindful of the specific actions I need to take to build better and stronger relationships with my customers. Here are a few of my favorite strategies. You'll also find these in the exercise files. To move a suspect to a prospect, I like to use my set of criteria questions. Are they the decision maker? Where are they headquartered? What business lifecycle are they in? For example, are they a startup, a growing business, or a more mature company? To turn a customer into a client, I do a full customer review to learn more about their business. I refer them business and I let them know how valuable they are to me. And then I ask for more business. You get the idea. Here's a final challenge. Take this relationship ladder and put the name of one of your customers under each rung. Now add the action you'll take with each customer to move him or her up your relationship ladder.