How to wean customers off a personal relationship with you

So today’s video, I want to talk about how to win customers off having a personal relationship with you. So we all know that when we first start our businesses, and if you are a recent start-up, then this might be the main thing you’re experiencing. Everyone wants to deal with you. And that’s great because people do by people and often, by having that personal relationship with someone, you can actually get the work in through the door and you can actually deliver a high quality service, but what you’ve got to then factor in is as your business grows, you then have to get staff and more people involved in the delivery of your product and service. So what then happens is when everyone just wants to deal with you, and then you’ve got other members of your team involved in the delivery of that service, it gets a lot more complicated and it gets a lot harder to deliver the best level of service.

And what then often happens is you end up getting queries from your customers about pieces of the work that you’re not completely current on at the moment, you may have an overview of it, but because you’ve got a member of your team, that’s engaged in delivering that work, they know a lot more about it than you do. So in those situations, it’s really important that the client then goes to that member of team because they know, they’ve got the answers to the questions, whereas if they go to you, you’ve then got to go to that member of the team, get the answers, and then go back to that client. And then it just adds this extra step in way, which slows everything down and creates a lot more work for everyone. And it can also lead to misunderstandings as well. So one of the things I want to cover in video is a couple of strategies I’ve used in the past to actually help our clients build relationships directly with our team.

Ultimately when you’re doing a good job in terms of developing your team. So when I say developing, I mean, hiring the right people, getting them engaged in your business and then giving them that ongoing training, then what’s going to happen. And what should happen is a few months, or even years down the line you would have a team of people. And depending on the activity they’re doing, they will probably be better at you at doing the activity. Obviously there might always be things in your role, in your business that you hang onto. But the idea is because these people in your team are better at you at these particular activities, because you’ve invested in that. And also given them the opportunity to specialize. It makes absolute sense for your client to actually be dealing with them directly. Obviously you’re not abdicating. So you are always giving them some sort of overview.

You’re asking your team, the right kind of questions you are then doing some sort of debrief at the end and asking how that interaction went. You’re making sure your checklists and your processes are being followed. So I’m in no way suggesting abdicating your responsibility. I’m talking about delegating part of this relationship. So really to get your customers comfortable with dealing with members of your team, you’ve just got to explain to them why it’s the most efficient way to do it and the best way for them to do it. So one of the main things is highlight that this member of the team actually is specialists in that particular area. So they definitely know what they’re doing. As a business you can do a bit more to build up the profile of your team members, especially on the social media side. And if you’ve got people involved in your business and you are regularly presenting them on social media to your clients and your prospects, that’s absolutely great.

But one of the key things definitely is building up the credibility of the team, helping that client understand that and to get the most accurate and efficient response, it’s best to go directly to that team member rather than you. Obviously they’ve got to then have faith that you are going to be providing the right level of supervision and direction for that team member. So you can definitely do that. And also you’ve got to train that team member to accept that query instead of you. So when certain queries are passed around your business, there should be a process in place for the receiving team member to say, “Okay, well firstly, introduce yourself to that client. And also acknowledge that you’ve receive that query from the person that just sent it to you or forwarded it to you and the team.”</p>

And then they should be going in and explaining why they’re the best person to actually help with that query. So today’s video, ultimately, as you’re growing your businesses and let’s face it, there’s not many businesses out there that sell for a million pounds without having a good team in place and having that delegation of relationships. So if you are serious about sending the business, then you’ve got to get to a point where your clients are comfortable approaching your team directly rather than you yourself. So all of this is kind of stuff we cover in our Apex program, which is about helping business owners create their million pound business. And it’s also part of our million pound processes course, which is part of our Apex program. So if you are looking to build your business into something, you can serve for a million pounds, then get in touch with me, like, follow share comment, and let me know, and then we’ll get you booked in for a free strategy meeting to discuss exactly how we can get your business from where it is now to be worth that million pounds. Right, thanks.