As the Internet increases the competitive marketplace, adding a Relationship Marketing strategy to your business can help to increase your businesses sustainability. Relationship Marketing focuses on building strong customer relationships that will withstand bids from competing companies to win your clients.

The prevalence of the Internet makes starting and having your own small business more viable than ever before, which means there is also more competition to win a client base. To secure a client base, and keep them loyal to you, is vital to build strong, personal relationships with your clients. People respond to personal contact, feeling valued and needed. If you can let your customers know that they are important to you and your business on an individual level, you will be one step closer to establishing long-term client relationships.

The following are a few more tips to increase your lead base when you are looking to secure new clients, and ultimately build a strong Relationship Marketing platform.

Response-Confirmation and Follow Up

Once you have captured a customer lead and gathered information on this potential client, you have a limited amount of time to contact the client. It is important to respond quickly to their interest in your company, while the potential client still has your business at the top of their mind.

This is tricky in building a new client relationship because if you are too aggressive, you may come across as either desperate or forceful, which may lead the potential client to view your business less favorably, and ultimately take their business elsewhere. Customers are fickle, and with the abundance of choices available throughout the Internet marketplace, there is little incentive for the customer not to take their business elsewhere if they are less than completely satisfied or even just a little bit irritated.

Your follow-up with a potential customer after making initial contact can be as simple as an automated response registering the contact, or a brief phone call to that prospect for their interest and inquire if they have any additional questions or would like further information.

In addition, take this opportunity to confirm their contact information and get permission to send them an introductory email about your company and services. This will establish a couple of important and strategic things: asking for a potential client’s permission to send subsequent information is polite and the prospect may choose to accept or decline, but you are putting the choice, and the power directly in their hands. People get overwhelmed and inundated with unsolicited materials both through postal deliveries and via email, so they often get irritated and do not even look at the materials.

Getting a prospect’s permission to send materials is respectful to them, which is important in the building of a strong relationship, and it will also make your company stand out to them, so that when they do receive your materials, they will be more likely to read them. This technique creates a space to begin to build a solid relationship with a potential client, so that you’re company and your conversation to stick in their mind.



By: Christian Fea

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If you are like most people you do not want to miss a thing. You sense there is much joy to be had in life and you want it. Of course you do! And yet there seems to be a shortage of hours in the day. It is not that we are incapable of fitting it all in. In fact, many of us run around crazily trying to cram in as much activity as possible. It is just that there are different parts of us vying for our time and attention.

We are busy people. So how do we decide what to do and when to do it? How do we determine what our priorities will be and where to focus our energies? Unless we take time to get to know our whole self - to move beyond our limited human perspective to embrace our more expanded spiritual vision - we may find ourselves going through the motions of our lives without much conviction, direction or confidence.

Currently we are going through a collective growth spurt where the ways of “the old human” no longer work for “the new human” we are rapidly becoming. For ease let us simplify this profound process of evolution with a simple distinction between the “old human” and the “new human”. Two entirely different species!

Our human self, old and new, is the individualized expression of our greater Spiritual Self. It is our unique personality housed within our physical body animated and energized with thoughts and feelings. But there is one dramatic difference between the old human and the new human and a world of difference in how each makes choices and prioritizes.

The Old Human is largely identified with the physical body and physical world. It has forgotten it’s larger Spiritual Self and lives imagining that what it thinks and feels and sees - from the human perspective- is all that there is. The old human determines what is real - and makes decisions - primarily based upon what it detects through the five senses. It does not believe anything else exists.

The New Human knows it has both a physically oriented point of awareness and a vast non-physical Spiritual consciousness as well. One without the other feels limited and disconnected. The New Human makes choices after aligning with its own Spiritual Self within. It knows that with alignment it is connected to a wealth of replenishing and nourishing inner resources and that choices made from a spiritual perspective are the most fulfilling ones.

By developing a direct and personal relationship with our own Spiritual Self we each find our own way to make this shift from old human to new human. With practice we learn to remember our spiritual nature. And bit-by-bit we release our limited ideas about ourselves to know ourselves to be a whole person.

Decisions made from wholeness feel different inside. Instead of second-guessing our decisions we relax and trust our choices. If we don’t like the results we attract we make new choices. Instead of feeling limited we feel adventurous. It is a new way of being human - to live and choose as a Whole Person.



By: Peri Enkin

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