Find customers and build relationships with 6 old and 4 new strategies

Back in the day, the techniques below were what you had to work with. You had to be super gifted and super diligent to succeed at relationship marketing. Relationships took years to develop. If you didn’t have someone with the right skills and experience on the payroll, you relied on public announcements and databases for prospecting. It was easy to fall into low win probability habits like blind bidding.

However, the old ways are no longer competitive. Relationship marketing can seem so difficult to get started that many companies assume they have to get a contract first in order to build relationships. They look at relationship marketing as something that helps them grow the account and get more contracts with the customer. The problem with this is that it starts with blind bidding to get a contract. Even if you rationalize that it’s not blind bidding because the organization is a strategic target, the fact is you haven’t qualified your leads by talking to anyone. There are more problems with this approach. Your company ends up being defined by the contracts it is lucky enough to win through blind bidding. Guess which ones those are likely to be? Commodities where the customer doesn’t care who the provider is and contracts that you win by being the lowest price. This is a trap that can kill your future margins.

Today it’s possible to be both more data driven and more personal. Not only are there new sources of information, but there are also new techniques. It is easier than ever to practice relationship marketing. 

New ways to practice relationship marketing

1. Big data – contracts. The IT techniques developed for understanding “big data” can also be used to develop insight in the pursuit of contracts. How many contracts does a customer award in what areas to which companies? What percentage of time does the incumbent win in that organization? How frequently do they modify their contracts? When do they release their RFPs? How often do they release on time? More raw data is available than ever before, but few companies invest in the analytics to turn data into an information advantage. 
2. Big data – people. Who are the decision makers at the customer? What are their backgrounds? What are they working on? What are their interests? Who do they connect to? How do you connect to them? What interests do you have in common? Resources like LinkedIn enable you not only to reach out to people, both as individuals and as an organization, Content marketing is an important part of conducting relationship marketing online. 

When you combine these, you get a completely different approach to marketing. It’s no longer about hiring a salesperson to go fishing for dollars. Now you can analyze data to discover who buys the most of what you sell, and who the stakeholders are for those procurements. You can break in simply by publishing some insight on the relevant topics and keyword searching for relevant staff at the customer to connect to. Once in, you can branch out and connect with the rest of the organization. Along the way, you’re not selling in the traditional sense. You’re sharing relevant information with people who need it. 

But you are also gaining insight. The kind of insight that can be turned into an information advantage. And starting your proposals with an information advantage leads to an increase in your win rate.