Relationship Development System

Several years ago during a severe storm, a tree feel on our house. Luckily no one was hurt, but the tree was very close to my youngest daughter's bedroom, and I knew I needed to have the tree removed as soon as possible. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember the name of "our tree guy", probably because it was a very stressful situation. Yet, I knew that he was my guy; I trusted him. I knew he was going to show up and get the job done. I didn’t want to take my chances with anyone else. I didn’t want an estimate. I didn’t want to wait weeks to have the tree removed. I wanted the issue to be resolved effortlessly. I finally tracked him down, and just as I thought, he fixed our situation immediately.

As I reflect back, I realized he needed to be contacting his clients monthly. He needed to send us friendly reminders letting us know that he was still there if we needed any help with anything. If I hadn’t been able to locate him, I would have been forced to use a random company that I had found on the Internet, and I knew that wasn’t what I wanted or needed. I have seen many businesses in this same exact spot. They are successful enough, but they don’t have time to communicate with their current and past clients. They just aren’t as successful as they could be. And in the end, they end up loosing potential business because past clients have lost touch with them.

The most important thing you can do for your business is to keep fueling your referral engine by creating a Relationship Development System (RDS). Your database of past, present, and potential clients should be current, and your systematic messages need to hold value. In Chas Wilson’s book, Five Plus One: The Entrepreneurs Formula for Success, he states that you need to master targeting by identify, locating, and contacting a steady stream of people who want what you have to offer. Technically you don’t exist and are out of business if you don’t have any customers, so it all comes down to finding, attracting and retaining customers.

Not only would I have benefited from my tree guy utilizing an RDS, his business would have also benefitted.