Attracting customers is traditional marketing. It includes everything from your location, advertising, promotions and appearance to word of mouth. Serving customers includes your product, quality, service, reliability and everything tangible a customer sees in your operation. It is your
operational reality. If your operational reality is not excellent then your business will fail.

Keeping customers is the challenge that seems to change constantly. Keeping customers years ago meant having the best product. Most businesses today make or sell a product that can be purchased elsewhere, especially with access to the world market through the Internet which made that
strategy obsolete.

Subsequently the requirement to keep customers has changed to focus on service. Companies fall over each other trying to improve customer service and increase the value a customer receives. Keeping customers changed a few years ago with entertainment as the way to keep customers. In our world of 104 channels on TV, video games, the Internet etc., entertainment is no longer unique, memorable or even different. Marketing people go crazy trying to find unique aspects of a business on which to launch a successful campaign because everyone is offering great service.

The key to success today still is in keeping customers. Keeping customers is now about developing a relationship, not just supplying a product, service or entertainment. The only thing you can't get on the intent, TV or by opening your wallet is a relationship. Relationship marketing, selling AND nurturing is the only way to succeed today in small business short of developing a Wal-Mart system
of driving suppliers to near bankruptcy levels to compete on price. It is the only viable way to differentiate your company in the market.

That means traditional marketing is replaced by relationship building. Selling is about building and nurturing the relationship. Customer service means treating customers as you would friends. And nurturing the relationship means using today's technology to stay in touch and be there for your customers. One reason that business is getting more complex and difficult is that we keep adding new ways to compete. We never leave the old ways of excellent product, dynamite service or catchy entertainment behind; they just get so common they are meaningless. They only have meaning
if you don't do them!

I like the commercial where a woman is going nuts over a kid playing soccer. The viewer finds out the mother is quietly sitting on the sideline while her financial planner is actively nurturing the relationship. The old adage that people buy from people they like was never truer than today.

We work with clients to lower the marketing budget and start a relationship budget. Winning@Business™ requires building the relationship inside and outside of the company that leads to success. As business success gets more complex, new ways to organize, manage and lead your company are required.