Becoming a Trusted Advisor Will Improve Your B2B Experience
A Trusted Advisor builds lasting relationships that shape connections between businesses and the people in them. Becoming a Trusted Advisor means understanding your customers' needs and providing a meaningful B2B experience.
Relationships Matter in B2B Customer Experience
You perceive your individual client relationships 1 in 2 ways:
You are undervaluing them and missing opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell
Or, you are over-confident and at risk for churn
Understanding your clients in more detail and their perception of you will save you from losing some key customers and open the door to creating valuable trusted advisor relationships. Taking the steps to become a Trusted Advisor to your clients has benefits beyond increasing revenue.
Most of the time when a sale has been completed, a transactional relationship begins to form between the buyer and seller. Once the sale is complete, the account rep may or may not continue having a relationship with the customer. Depending on how the organization is structured, the client services team may step in and the account rep continues working prospects. It’s just the way things work, but it doesn’t mean that future growth opportunities are not worth pursuing with clients.
Selling is only impactful when its focus is on providing meaningful customer experiences.
A smart customer experience approach thinks about keeping their clients around long after they’ve been greeted at the front door.
What follows next is understanding where you stand in your client's perception so you know how to improve these relationships. With Encompass-CX, we look deep into each of your customers' accounts to measure your Relationship Climate. From there we identify who among customers and account managers have Antagonistic, Transactional, Predisposed, and Trusted Advisor relationships.
The Long-Term Benefits of Being a Trusted Advisor
Becoming a Trusted Advisor to your clients is beneficial to long-term revenue growth.
Don’t just sell - build strong relationships with your B2B clients through integrity and competency. Build connections with your clients. The longer a customer relationship lasts, then the more profitable it becomes:
1. Loyal customers are worth 10 times more than their initial purchase
2. It’s 6-7 times more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to keep one.
Here’s the takeaway: it’s easier to increase your profits through your current customer base.
Remember - the higher your client retention rate is, the lower your overall cost.
So ask yourself, “Do I want to become a Trusted Advisor that clients perceive as reliable, trustworthy, and impactful?”
Building the Right CX Program for
Learning how to manage customer relationships effectively is a rare skill to have – regardless if you’re in B2C or B2B, today’s competitive markets are challenging and it’s no longer about price, but about experience and the value associated with it.
It's time to leverage data and CX insights. By learning how to measure the various touch points within your customer relationships and identifying where they need the most attention, you can start to become the Trusted Advisor your clients expect you to be.
Find the Customer Relationships to Improve!
Encompass-CX identifies high-value, at-risk clients and provides the how-tos for improving their B2B experience. Start a 30-day Free Trial.