It is very important to maintain contacts and good relationships within the business community.
Networking can help to extend your influence as a business. Its essentially free advertisement. It allows you to create a positive image for your your business in the community. It also provides greater access to information, which in turn assists with marketing strategies.
To be good at networking; attend functions attend informal gatherings host and attend seminars join social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter
Join an industry group
Join associations establish regular contacts with similar outside organisations
Stay in regular contact with your networks via newsletters and emails.
In the world of today, the internet is your greatest networking tool. There are so many forums, websites, groups and programs you can join for free. Thats the greatest part about it. All it takes is a bit of time and thought and in return you gain a whole lot of new professional friends and advertisement.
Developing Customer Relations
This involves more than just providing good customer service.
Relations can be nurtured using the following strategies.:
Good database management: Collect information from you customers. Create memberships to your different establishments. This way you gain information for marketing while building a rapport with your customers so they keep coming back. Provide incentives for loyalty. You would be amazed at how effective something as simple as the "buy 10 get one free" card can be in gaining sales. Keep your database of customer information confidential and well organised. Use it to create statistics for use with marketing strategies.
Provision of regular newsletters: Newsletters will help to remind people that you are still around and worth doing business with. This is the perfect place to promote your latest deals or products.
An effective system for complaints: It is important to keep customers happy, even in the odd