Business is relationship building

(And that’s why women are better at business than we get credit for!)

Business is relationship building. What brought this on? Two articles. One posed the question, are you treating your customers as guests, or as friends? The second asked whether you are capturing your website visitors’ emails so you can continue to build a relationship.

So, I talked about this with my web site class Monday. We talked about ways to build relationships based on your regular website content, like including meaningful profiles of key people, using vivid descriptions that spur the visitors’ imaginations, and telling stories. Even subtle changes can yield big results. Here are two real-world examples copied from a real site:

• Boring info: “20+ years public relations”
• Much better: “30+ years in all areas of Grocery from Sacker through Owner”

The second item definitely gives a much better feeling for the person than the first.

We also talked about simple tools that make a site more interactive. Part of any good relationship is two-way communication.

• Email sign-ups
• Polls
• Forms
• Blogs

These are probably included in your webhosting content manager, or you can use a tool like FrontPage to implement them.

So start thinking about your business relationships, and ways you can build better relationships with your customers.

[small biz] [rural] [Becky McCray]