A good way of doing this is to think about employers as making a journey through your customer pipeline.
- Customers enter the pipeline via a wide funnel.
- They then travel along the pipeline.
- When they reach the end of the pipeline they have become your advocates and promoters.
However, you need to know where employers are in the pipeline to help you to decide how to manage your relationship with them. You need to do this for several reasons.
- You deal with employers in different ways depending on where they are in your pipeline.
- You allocate differing amounts to resource to managing your relationship with them when they are at different points in the pipeline.
When you know more about the employer and you think there is a possibility of doing business with him or her, then the suspect becomes a prospect.
When you do your first piece of business with the employer, he or she becomes a customer.
As you build the relationship the customer becomes a client. You start to tailor what you do to meet each client’s expectations and offer a differentiated set of products and services.
Clients with whom you work well become your fans and will, if asked, promote you, or give you a reference.
A few of your fans will become your advocates. These are the employers who take the initiative in promoting you. They are always looking for opportunities to let people know what a great job you do. These are the people who reach the end of your pipeline.
Your customer pipeline is an essential element in building your business.
Have you worked out where each employer sits in your pipeline? If you haven’t, you need to.
This is the ninth in a series of ten posts about client attraction basics.
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