Accelerate the Speed of your Customer Relationships

Hey, it's Jermaine Edwards, your customer growth guide, and I want to speak to you about the speed to relationships. Last, uh, video I spoke about return on relationships and how A lot of relationships with our customers can be enjoyable, but not meaningful where both parties aren't getting better. And the defined nature of getting better is, is the relationship value exceeding the cost of management and engagement of the relationship itself? So we're gonna talk more now about the speed to relationship. What I mean by that is this, that traditionally there's a held view that we need a certain amount of time before a relationship reaches a certain level of intimacy, certain level of value, a certain level of exchange. And that's just not true. As we look at the research, we look at the psychology in general, social relationship psychology and intimacy, we look at the marriage relationship material, recognize there are two fundamental things that really fast-track the condition and quality of relationships with any human being connected together. So we can talk about that exchange right now. So let's start with this. That for you, with your customers, you are working together and you're having a— you're communicating. It's a two-way exchange, two-way exchange between you. But there are these three questions that are often cycling through our communication and our engagement with customers that we aren't always aware of. And that's these three questions. Let me offer this. The three questions of this Do you care? Can you help? And can I trust you? At all times inside our relationships, these three questions are coming up. Do you care? Can I help? Can you help? And can I trust you? And so at any point in time in our relationships, one of these things could be violated because of the way in which we come across and a way in which something is managed, treated or the way in which we address something specific. And so, within the context of a relationship, these things can sabotage the way in which the relationship is really being viewed and observed by somebody else. So how do we navigate it? How do we think differently about that, knowing that these 3 questions exist? Well, I talked to you about these 2 things that accelerate relationships. Let's address them right now. So the first one we're going to do is we're going to create a bit of a chart. All right, we have a kind of a y and an x-axis. And so on one axis we're going to have time, right? Time, T-I-M-E, time. And on the x-axis we're going to have intimacy. And relevancy. Okay, so this is kind of the heart connection, and this is the value piece. Okay, so knowing these two things are here, what do we— how do we make sense of this? Well, like I said, traditionally we're thought of as time being the major component, right? So given enough time your relationship will get better if you're doing, you know, a decent job, right? Is that true all the time? No, of course not. We see it practically with ourselves. We can sometimes be in contact with a customer for years and not really have any real close intimate connections with the majority of stakeholders that we know we should be in connection with. Versus this, whereas if we spent time thinking about intimacy and relevancy we can condense the time to the relationship actually yielding much more fruitful and valuable experiences for you and your clients. So how do we go ahead and do that? Well, this is what we— again, two concepts here, really important. So these are the questions being asked: do you care? Can you help? Can I trust you? And we've noticed here that we cannot wait for this fictional amount of time to start building really effective relationships. We know how do we do that practically right now, and we do that through intimacy and relevance. The intimacy is really about getting to know the desires, fears, goals, and, and values of that individual, and the outcomes— where are they heading, what makes them who they are, the organization who they are culturally, and what they're pursuing. And relevancy is around connecting who you are, what you do to the nature of what it is that they're trying to achieve and who they're trying to become and the person that they are. So how do we do this? Well, we're going to look at 4 really practical ways to think about this. So the first is connection. What we're going to do, we're going to connect. I'm going to do that intentionally, right? Connect intentionally. That was an intention, right? Then we're going to invest. Wisely. We're going to personalize outcomes. And then we also have to observe deeply. Okay, I'm just going to tap into one of these right now that often isn't discussed very often. So obviously connecting intentionally, we're doing that often because we are communicating and figuring out how we make meaningful next steps with people in front of us. But here's something we don't often think about is observing deeply. What do we mean by observing deeply? Well, it's this, it's understanding the changing conditions with your customers, with your contacts that influence or impact the way in which you might work together. So how you decide, how you delegate, how you disagree, how you make the next determined steps with a particular client— client observing deeply gives you a view of what specifically could impact these 3 questions: whether or not we're demonstrating we care, whether or not we can help, and whether or not we can actually be trusted to do that work. Now, if something disrupts or disengages a relationship It may be something contextual like legislation or a pandemic that interrupts the nature of your relationship. The question that we're always wanting to answer here is, hey, are we demonstrating care? Are we demonstrating that we can help? And are we showing that we're trustworthy? Observing deeply helps us to better understand and test our assumptions and our preconceptions on whether or not we are actually living and acting in a way in which we can increase intimacy and relevancy, our knowledge of the individual and our relevancy and ability to meet them where they are and demonstrate that we're somebody of value. If you can understand these concepts, you almost in any conversation be able to raise the quality of conversation, the connection between you and that individual at a much deeper level, and also inspire greater reputational access to other people, because the reputation of who you are, of the intimacy of what— who you know and what you know about them, and your relevancy will far exceed the relationship with a single individual. So take those things into mind. Again, can I— can you demonstrate care, help, and trust? It's not about time, it's about intimacy and relevancy. And if you think about connecting intentionally, investing your time wisely, personalizing your communication, but ultimately observing deeply, you will see the quality of your engagements go up significantly. Now I've got a resource here that gives you a little more insight into these 4 areas because there is a bit of a framework around that to help you. And do have a look at that. But until then, wishing you success on accelerating the relationship success that you have with your customers or any contact or any kind of person that you meet. And we'll speak later.