Client Relationship #Goals 05/18/16 | Four Columns Marketing If you’ve had any recent exposure to the junior high social media scene, AKA tween world, you may be familiar with the hashtag “goals”. This trending term is often paired with prefixes such as “life”, “squad” or “relationship”. In this context, #goals refers to something perceived as inspiring and unattainable. It can also serve as a sarcastic gesture referring to one’s own limitations. Relationship goals, then, point to relationships the viewer or account user deem as both motivating and too perfect to be true. As of this morning, there are 2 million uses of this hashtag on Instagram alone – that’s a lot of goals. Although I’m not here to give you a lesson in tween lingo, I do think we could all pay a little more attention to our relationships in the work place, especially with our clients. What comes to mind when asked about your ideal customer? Do you have a clean bullet point list or a carefully crafted spiel about your target audience and model client? If so, that’s a great start, but how well do you really know your customers – both current and future? Research shows the more time you spend developing client relationships before and during their interactions with your business, the more likely you are to retain customers and even expand your client base. The Ivey Business Journal defines customer relationship management as: “A series of strategies and processes that create new and mutual value for individual customers, builds preference for their organizations and improves business results over a lifetime of association with their customers.” Relationships take time, especially if you want to develop something long-lasting. But how do you get there? What sort of strategies and processes need to be in place to help manage each client relationship? Start by developing your #relationshipgoals – what do you want your customers to experience after meeting with your team? How do you want them to talk about you to other potential customers? What advantages could your company gain through client relationships? Taking time to identify a vision of where you want to go will provide the right kind of motivation to move forward. Once you’ve thought about what sort of relationships you want to create, start creating a plan and identify a couple critical touch points for each relationship building process. By building in a few checkpoints along the way, you will be able to measure the potential success of each client relationship. The question remains, then – what are your #relationshipgoals?