By Rabi Abdullahi
There are many different ways to build many different kinds of relationships. When you are building a relationship for the purpose of obtaining customers for your business, it is important to remember to be yourself.
Your ultimate goal should be to create a long-term relationship with the person because this is how loyal customer is made and a loyal customer is a return customer. I believe the three most important techniques for building a long-term loyal customer are building rapport, working the person’s family, home life, and hobbies into the general conversation, and always keep eye contact and never forget to begin and end with a firm hand shake. Rapport is the ability to relate to others in a way that creates trust and understanding. It is important to build rapport with your customers, as it gets there unconscious mind to accept your suggestions. Once you have a since of rapport with the customer you will be the first person they come to or send someone to for your particular service.
Word of mouth to friends and family from your customers is the best form of advertising.
Another technique that is often used is learn of the customers family, home life, and hobbies and use them to make the customer comfortable and feel welcome. By talking with the customer about themselves and things that appeal to them, a trust between you to will start to build.
People in general love to talk about themselves, so learn all you can for the next time they visit you
In the first excitement of new love, it seems that the good feelings will last forever. But, the wear and tear of daily living and life issues can cause you to put your romance on the back burner, and let it fall away.
The skills couples need to keep intimacy alive in a long-term relationship differ from new relationship intimacy skills, and they’re not obvious because people don’t talk about them. Like most couples, you and your partner may need to lower your expectations of easy romance and glamour and raise your level of communication, gratitude, and having fun together.
Have a weekly “state of the union” discussion:
This is not an argument or complaint session, it’s an opportunity to update each other on how things are going between you. I recommend it because partners often tend to avoid talking about what’s going on until a problem is created. If you keep each other informed of both the good things and the problems on a regular basis, nothing will get out of hand or become too dramatic to solve easily. This works every time with every couple in counseling who tries it.
Express love, kindness, and sweetness:
The relationships depicted in the media (and probably your own parents’ relationship) do not model kind, loving, and considerate behavior very well. Although the press may be bored by politeness, kindness, and happiness, those traits will make your partner and your relationship flourish and blossom. Kindness is the lubricant of your communication and expressing love is the fertilizer that makes the relationship bloom.
Care for yourself and your partner:
Guard against sacrificing too much by making sure you care about yourself emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Guard against narcissism and selfishness by caring about your partner in the same four areas. Achieving balance in these areas is the best way to ensure that your relationship will thrive, and no one will carry too much resentment, which is the only emotion that can destroy love.
Talk:
Make a point to talk frequently and honestly to each other about your frustrations, about sex, about anger, about disappointment, about your appreciation of each other, about the meaning of life, about everything. No topic should be off limits. Learn to listen and communicate instead of fighting. Fighting is childish, and you want a grown‑up relationship.
Strive to work together to solve anything that comes up:
Be a team, create a partnership. Don’t get stuck on who’s right or wrong. Instead, focus on what will solve the problem. Strive to work together so both of you can have what you want. When you build a successful working partnership, each of you will feel supported and respected by the other. When each of you feels the other has your best interests at heart, problems are solved not “my way” or “your way,” but so that both are happy with the solution. The mutuality of this type of partnership creates an environment of love where deep trust grows. When trust, respect, responsibility, and love feel mutual, that’s when we feel secure in being loved
Written by Rabi Abdullahi of Mass communication Department Abubakar Tatari Ali Polytechnic Bauchi.
