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You have to be able to sell something to someone if you are in business. Most people do not have the perfect product or service that sells itself. A business needs customers and clients to like it. Learning to be nice is an essential skill for any business.

It is, therefore, amazing that so many businesses don’t know how to be nice or whether or not their customers like them. Relationship management is all about learning what your customers like and delivering on it.

Large corporations can spend hundreds of thousands on integrated computerised relationship management systems, but often neglect to think about the actual human interactions between customers and staff.

My first ever job was in a suit hire business over the school summer holidays. Summer was the wedding season and my job was to fit suits to new grooms and best men. My boss could look at someone as they came in and pick a suit that fitted perfectly. I had to ask what size they needed. Typically, a man would say he had a 36 inch waist. It used to take three sets of trousers before he finally, grumpily, admitted that he needed a 42 inch waste. By the end of the summer, I too had stopped asking the customer what size they thought they were and just gave out the right sized suits.

Customers are not always right, but good service is.

The value of having good relationships is your reputation. Reputation is a more valuable commodity than people think. It is not just famous people who have reputations – everyone has one.

By far the best advertising is when someone says how good a company you are. People invest thousands in advertising and very little in relationships. I pay far more attention when someone I know says they have a good dentist, or a lawyer who does not charge you twice if their answering machine takes a message and they call you back, than any sort of advertising.

Some people are naturally good at developing relationships with people. They are networkers who can be worth their weight in gold if their networks can be used to shift ideas. Unfortunately, networkers are often spending their day writing emails and texts about where to meet for coffee or lunch. They are next to useless in helping your business.

If you have a sales team you would expect them to be good at relationship management but often their focus is on their targets and the next sale. There is not enough emphasis given to long-term relationships and developing customer loyalty. There is more to relationships than an immediate sale.

There are a lot of skills and techniques that can be adopted that will help improve and sustain your business relationships.

The first thing to do is imagine you are a customer of your business.

• What would you like to happen?
• Then you look at your bad habits and change them.
• Empower your staff by giving them responsibility and let them make decisions.
• Identify ways to engage your customers in commenting on your performance and get them to tell you how to make things better.

The key is to develop and use a system to review decisions and learn from mistakes.

There are some things you can not change or influence. Some people will not like you. The customer is always right must be the silliest statement still going around business and sales. If a customer is unreasonable there is only so much you can do. You need to have a system of dealing with complaints, a way to try and solve them and a way to say that you can’t help anymore.

Relationships come into their own when there is a problem you want to solve. If people know you and like you they will be more willing to work with you to solve the problem.

Improving relationships is the biggest single thing you can do to improve your reputation. If you do not know how your business is being perceived, then you should stop and find out. Being nice pays big dividends.