Manfred Ritschard 14. February 2017

Interview for Valentine's Day

The text discusses building and maintaining perfect customer relationships through gestures of appreciation, asking insightful questions, building trust through mirroring, and effective communication techniques like focusing on eye contact. Relationship intelligence is key in business and personal interactions.

with Manfred Ritschard on the topic of the perfect customer relationship.

How does the perfect customer relationship work? ... by not only being built, but also nurtured. Relationship maintenance means constantly proving to each other that you like and appreciate each other. Love and appreciation are demonstrated through words, affection, and material gifts. A customer relationship is similar to a romantic relationship: We show our loyal customers our appreciation through compliments, beautifully worded greeting cards, but also through gifts, price discounts, invitations... Just like in a romantic relationship, "Big gift, big love." If the tokens of love diminish over time, it negatively affects the relationship. Therefore, start building relationships with small gifts and gradually increase over time. My practical tip for Valentine's Day: Give male customers a rose with the note "For Your Loved One!". For female customers, give a nicely wrapped voucher for a flower shop with the note "For Your Loved One!". How can I find out what he/she really wants with which questions? In addition to the usual question "What do you value most?", I recommend dissociative questions such as: What do you think other people in your situation wish for? What is important to other people in your environment (e.g. superiors, colleagues, customers, family...)? By having the other person put themselves in someone else's shoes through these questions, it becomes easier for them to talk about their true needs. Additionally, the wishes of third parties are also taken into account. And these are often the true needs that the customer wants or needs to fulfill. How can one quickly build trust in a customer relationship? With the principle of "Mirroring." In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), this is called "Pacing." From the beginning, mirror your counterpart nonverbally (similar outfit, same body movements) and verbally (use the same words). During the conversation, align your values with those of the other person: e.g. "Loyalty is very important to me as well." This builds trust because we trust what is familiar to us: Imagine you enter a room where everyone is dressed formally. You are wearing jeans. In one corner of the room, you see a small group of people in jeans. Where do you go? Flirting Right! - What should one pay attention to in communication from the first second? Pay attention to the eye color of your counterpart, raise your eyebrows slightly, and think intensely "I like you. Who are you?" Avoid staring by allowing your eyelids to close and open slightly slower every two seconds. A little exercise: silently count "twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three..." and slowly and consciously close and open your eyelids. When you focus on the eye color of your counterpart and only allow positive thoughts, both your eyes and your counterpart's eyes will start to glisten within seconds. This is an expression of mutual sympathy. And eyes never lie! From the first second, we sense the attitude of the other person by quickly and mostly unconsciously picking up on body language signals. This ability likely helped humans distinguish between friend and foe in the first seconds of an encounter 100,000 years ago. For example, raised eyebrows are a facial expression of interest and nonverbally say "I trust you. Trust me too." You might wonder why we don't just smile? Often, when facing our crush or when we want to win over an important customer, we are tense. Our smile then doesn't reach our eyes and appears stiff and fake. However, focusing on our eye area leads to a natural smile. Speaking of flirting: American anthropologist Margaret Mead showed in a study of the flirting behavior of American soldiers with English girls during World War II that contacts between the two genders progressed in 30 individual stages. For the soldiers, kissing was at stage 5, but for the English girls, it was only at stage 25. My practical tip: Build the relationship with the customer gradually - it's better to have more brief contacts in different situations than to get straight to the point. The more people experience together, the stronger the relationship becomes. What is relationship intelligence? Relationship intelligence is the ability to interact with people in a way that builds mutual trust and strengthens it sustainably. Building trust is a process. That's why relationship intelligence is important to win people over to me and my cause. This applies to love as well as in business. The intensity of trust determines "Yes" or "No" - be it at the altar or in a sales conversation. For more information on the topic of "Customer Relationship," click here: http://www.trainers-excellence.de/redner/manfred-ritschard.html

Interview for Valentine's Day

with Manfred Ritschard on the topic of the perfect customer relationship.

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