Speaker 1: Hey, Marianne DeNovellis here with the Six Figure Mastermind. Welcome back. Today we're going to talk about how to build really strong relationships with your customers. You know they're the root of your business, you know they're the root of your success so let's strengthen that bond. Business is all about relationships and if you want to be successful in business, you've got to have great relationships with your customers. There's very specific things that you can do to cultivate a super strong relationship with your clients and a super strong relationship with any mentors you may come across. It comes from both sides, a relationship is built from two sides of the bridge. Let's build the bridge, let's make it happen. If you want to have a great relationship with your customers, you've got to have an active experience with the customer. That means if the customer is purchasing from you, that you want to be there every step of the way and when they say the fortune is in the follow-up, that means the is in the follow-up. When we say the fortune is in the follow-up, here's what that means. The follow-up means I've had a contact with you and I need to make another one. That follow-up may be before or maybe even after the sale but here's the thing, the customer wants to be with you the entire time because they've opted into your product or service which means they've opted into your lifestyle. Check out our other videos on how to build customer loyalty, you're going to learn a lot about the lifestyle and people nowadays are drawn to a less professional approach meaning that we've seen the days of people in front of the guru, we've seen the guru on front of the stage, the inaccessible one who knows all the answers and has no relevancy to us as normal people. We saw it in the presidential elections just a few years ago. Do you remember when Mitt Romney was running for president and they said, oh people don't know, can't relate to him because he's not familiar with you know how people show up in life and he's not familiar with being poor and whatever it is, people had a huge hissy fit after they realized that they didn't feel really close to this person because there was this professional air that was going on. When that professionalism is stripped away or the guise of professionalism is stripped away and you see the real and genuine authentic person behind the professional persona, people are drawn to that. Think about the people that you admire most. Do you remember watching Susan Boyle on American Idol? Do you remember when she walked out onto that stage dressed beautifully and she blew the judges away because of how talented she was, of how vulnerable she was. She was an incredible example of this, of just being her and going for it. Now there's something to be said about being refined, about being polished, about being presentable, those are all good things, those are all wonderful things but if you start to pretend that you're something that you're not, people feel very that. People will feel that and they won't want to do business with you because there's some level of inauthenticity which means some level of fake which means some level of lie which is me, don't touch, don't want anything to do with that. So let me give you a couple of examples. I have a colleague in the business who is very very concerned about how they appear and about how their lifestyle appears and about how they look and they've kind of put this this mask up that says, you must obey and go with what I put up as my mask so that I can feel good about me, so that you can feel good about me and if I if I make mistakes, no one can know about it because I'm the one that's supposed to know everything and to be honest, I at one point fell into that trap too of oh gosh, now I'm the one who who knows everything and now I can't make mistakes otherwise what would people think? You know what they would think? They would think you're human, that's what we're all doing, we're all figuring this thing out and even the one who knows so much about their field and their craft and they have success and results to show it, I got news for you, they're still making mistakes, they're still goofing up sometimes but the brilliance of them is how they get back up again and that's what the public wants to see, that's what your customer wants to see, they want to see the real person behind all of the fancy lights and behind all of the logos and behind all of this. I'll give you another example of this, I recently became friends with Grant Thompson, many of you may have heard of him, he's the king of random, he's got an amazing YouTube channel right over next door. Grant is an amazing human being and I knew him as this rock star person and when we got into an arena where we could actually strip away all the titles, strip away all the the fame and all of the labels and all of the logos and all of the business and get down to the nuts and bolts, I actually developed an amazing relationship with him and his wife. In fact, we go and play at Lowe's air sports gym every now and then together and about once a week and we go play and we just have fun and I'll watch as people come up to him and they'll recognize him and say, oh my gosh, you're the king of random, can we take a picture? That's so cool to meet you and I love that that fandom and that's super high energy and it's super fun but people will put this funny chasm between themselves and someone they admire that says, somehow we're different and somehow I can't be like you and if you're in business for yourself, you know that that chasm can't be made by you. You can't control it if your fans make it, you can't control it if people are starstruck or not and how they show up to you but you can say, you know what, I'm a real person, I'm just figuring this out, yeah, it's cool, I have a bunch of success but I still have things that I'm working on, they still have places where I can mess up and be vulnerable. As long as you can maintain that humanity, that's what actually attracts people to you. One of my most successful stage presentations was one that I actually had a breakdown on stage. I had some emotions come up, some tears, some breathless moments where I wasn't speaking very well and after that presentation, I had more people walk up to me than probably any of my other presentations, some of them combined because of how relatable it was. When we say get rid of the professional approach, we're just saying be relatable, be human, it's okay to be flawed, it's okay to be messed up and in fact, people relate to you way better when that's the case. If you want to build a strong relationship with your customer, not only do you have to be an active participant in what they're doing, not only do you need to be relatable, it's time to get a good memory. I remember meeting with Ed Hoyt, he's one of the top business producers that I have ever met, sold the last company for billions of dollars and when I met with him, I had met him twice in my entire life. I was so impressed by this man because the second time I met him, he asked me how my husband was doing and remembered that he was a chef. I was blown away that he remembered that little bit from his me. I don't know if he stalked me on Facebook and and found it out and and just looked me up before I came in the room or what it was and frankly, I didn't even care because I felt how genuine he was with me. I felt that he really cared and really was concerned about me and what I was working on and about my relationships. I admired that about him so when I saw that he did that, I thought, you know what? I need to care about what other people care about. You know, back in the days when there were switch boards and when you called someone, you called the operator and they plugged you in literally to the person that you wanted to talk to and kind of listened in on every single conversation that ever happened. Do you know what the number one most common word was that was heard over those telephone waves? Take a guess. What was the most common word? You could guess like me or hello or hi. The most common word recorded on those telephone waves, I. Single letter, lots of meaning. People are most interested in themselves. So be interested in what your customers are interested in, meaning be interested in them. That is the most genuine and authentic way to grow your customer base and to grow those customer relationships is to be interested in what your customers are interested in. Take an interest in what they're talking about. Look up what they're doing and find out if Facebook is an open forum guys, find out what customers are doing, find out what their lifestyles are like, find out you know, what they're struggling with especially if you're in a coaching relationship with them which means you're spending time with them on a regular basis, ask them about their lives, keep tabs on what they're doing, offer to help where and if you can and build that amazing customer relationship. So you've got amazing customer relationships because you're being vulnerable, you've got amazing customer relationships because you've got a good memory and you've got an amazing customer relationship because you're taking time to experience the customers experience right alongside them. Your customers are your best friends, at least that's my favorite kind of customers, people I love to spend time with, people I love to hang around, people I love to be around and you guys, let's hang out, let's spend some time with each other in the comments thread here, I want to open up this discussion with what is your favorite way to connect with people especially if they're brand new people that you've never met, maybe online, maybe out in the public, who knows? Hit the subscribe button, let's chat tomorrow. I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye.