Customer Loyalty is a Relationship Business

When it comes to maintaining loyal customers, one simple fact never changes: It's all about the relationship you have with them. They already know all about your company's products and services - and they've already become your customer. But in today's day and age, competition for that same customer is increasing. You've got to find a way to keep them for life.

Once that relationship is developed, you want to keep it strong. Identify what your client needs and go the extra mile to provide it. One way to do that is to recognize their behavioral style.

About Behavioral Styles
You've probably seen from your own experience how one sales and service approach worked great with one person, yet you got a very different reaction from someone else.

Behavioral styles impact:

• How frequently your customer wants you to contact them.
• How much detail they want you to provide when following up.
• How strong a personal relationship with you they need.

The same approach won't work with everyone. As you learn to adapt your approach to make the customer feel more at ease, the more loyal they will become and more sales will eventually result.

The Four Behavioral Styles
There are four key behavioral style tendencies in the work place. Although we all can demonstrate all styles, most people will demonstrate 1-2 primarily. Based on these four prominent styles, there are 15 combination patterns, based on someone's primary and secondary style tendencies. The four key styles are:

1. Dominance. This style is fast-paced, direct, task-oriented and mostly interested in the bottom line. They won't want you to spend a lot of time on details, but to be brief and provide the answers they need... and to provide them quickly.
   
   
2. Influence. This style is fast-paced and people-oriented. They want to enjoy the working relationship with you and feel as if there is a lot of rapport, friendship, and a fun interaction. They will start to look elsewhere if there's not a strong personal connection between the two of you.
   
   
3. Steadiness. This style is methodical and people-oriented. They will feel uncomfortable if they think you are not available for support, don't care about them, or don't respond quickly to their concerns. Timely follow-up is important. If they don't think they can depend on you, they will be vulnerable to other competitors.
   
   
4. Conscientiousness. This style is analytical, thoughtful and very task-oriented. They will want all the details you can provide and will be highly suspicious if they think you can't answer their many questions. It's important to have your facts straight, and to provide the answers or resource people needed to help them feel they made the right decision to choose your company over any others that have contacted them.

Three Important Steps
Once you have recognized the importance of behavioral styles at work, there are three key steps that will help you build better relationships with your clients. They are:

1. Understand your own style.
2. Learn to read the behavioral style of your client.
3. Adapt your approach to best fit your client's needs.

How to Best Learn and Apply These Steps
A self-assessment profile to identify your own style will provide a great deal of insight into your own behavioral style strengths and tendencies. You will then need to learn strategies to identify other's styles and adapt your approach to best fit your client.

We recommend the DiSC Classic Profile®, combined with the Understanding Behavioral Styles online self-paced course as a robust, powerful, cost-effective learning solution. To learn more about our special offerings or to discuss your specific interests, contact Quantum Learning Solutions at 800-683-0681.