We love our customers, but it doesn’t mean that we need to always get a one night stand when we first meet.

In your marketing and sales process, it is often getting qualified leads and customers that tends to be the most costly or difficult within your processes (your funnel).  Once you have achieved that, you want to build a relationship with your customers, and nurture that.  Instead of making the mistake of making it only about a pitch.

So lets take a look a a few things you should remember:

This is why you don’t want to simply have a one night stand.  This means simply trying to “close the deal” with pitches without building a relationship by providing value and show them what you stand for in the market place.  You want to increase the lifetime value of your customers and prospects, and have them come back to you again and again now that you have filled their need.
Your customers are a valuable commodity, to be treated with respect.  You don’t want to simply continuously blast them with offers if you want them to be responsive.  Yet, the truth is I see many markters doing exactly this.  Provide them value, then once every few messages provide the pitch.

If you are the face of your brand, you need to be sure that it gets in front of your customers and see that there is a personal touch.  Provide them ongoing value, and they will keep coming back to you within your marketplace.  If not, it is still key that your brand still has a clear message to your customers, and continues to provide value.  Remember the old rule of thumb that it takes 7-12 contacts with a prospect to close a sale.
If you are interacting with your prospects and customers on Facebook, know that your fans want to interact with you, not be marketed to.  The moral of No one night stands is particularly important in social media.  Remember it is “social media,” you wouldn’t run into a party and start trying to sell everyone, and you must take a similar approach when interacting in social media, think first about what they can learn about you to make a good decision, or interact with you, so they WANT to take further action with you.

Know why your prospect come, and why customers buy your brands product or service.  This means you need to know the real full resason that your customers make that buying decision and what is the complete need you are filling.  It is very easy for people to make assumptions about their customers, but lets dig a bit deeper and you will discover a lot more profit potential by indetifing your market.  Just because a person decides to participate in a fat loss program doesn’t simply mean that they think they are fat.  Why are they doing this?  It may be that the want to FEEL healther, be more appealing to the opposite sex/spouse, or feel more confident with friends perceptions of them.  This is a simple example, but whatever you provide, knowing the specifics of the need you are really filling will put you far ahead of your competion.

Understand that perception often become reality when it comes to marketing and what people think of your brand.  If they have a bad experience they are likely to continue to have a bad perception, if they have a good opinion, then it is likely that it will perceive their contact with you as more positive.  So be sure you have control and know what perception you are creating within your marketspace, is it a good perception or a bad one?  Truth is that within marketing, how they perceive you will have a big effect on the conversion of your product or service.

No more one night stands.  Start thinking about the long term relationship with your customers.  Keep these things in mind, remember that you want to increase the lifetime value of your prospects, and get them coming back to you again and again now that you have them, because THEY know that you can best fill their need within your marketplace.