Your ability to develop strong business relationships can make you are break you. By Octavian Msongamwanja #000150

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Business Relationships

By Octavian Msongamwanja

My name is Octavian Msongamwanja and once again I’m very happy to be inspiring better businesses offices. Today we’ll be talking about our business relationships. Relationship in business, are very key. Because, again, you know, people buy from people they don’t buy from businesses. So for you as a business owner or someone who is running a business, you need to make sure that you maintain good relationships you network with people, so that way you guarantee your business to be able to go far. And the kind of business relationships that I want to talk about today is, you know, customer relationship with your employees, and then something knows that it’s a business principle, but I also Tom this as another form of relationship is business owner and a business itself, you know the relationship between the business owner and the business itself. And, you know, I grew up in Tanzania in a rural area I lived in a village for about until when I was about 11, years old.

One of the things that people back then I do not have any knowledge about business, and right now looking back, I see like the, you know, Some of the business people in our village. Okay, we had only two shops and the two shops were like miles away from each other. So like my, for example, my mom would send me go to the shop I’ll go to the shop, and you’d be told maybe the salesperson is in the shower. So you have to go home, or maybe after a day until whenever they come back, or if they go somewhere where they went to the hospital. The shop is open but you have to wait. That was that era that time, I was able to go back to the village. The Things are different now there are more shops, there’s competition. So, the business owners could not be able to, or they cannot be able to run the same way that used to run you know in the past.

So things have changed so relationships are more key because now there’s more like, you know, that goods that you’re providing or your business he Sally, people are able to get it from another shop or from a different business, or maybe they can get and substitute goods. So, it is very key that you maintain the relationships with together with, you know, with your customers as well as your employees. And, again, going back to, you know, my, my growing up. Experience my life experience. One of the things that you know just going back to Tanzania. One time I was in Dar Salam which is a capital city and I went to the shop. And this, I don’t know if that lady was the shop or was the owner of the business, or I tend to believe not. Maybe she was like, on employee, and I was at a shop standing there and she was on the phone for almost like five minutes waiting for to stop me. After five minutes maybe six, I decided to leave because he wasn’t like paying attention to me whatsoever.

So I decided to leave. And that is, wherever owns that shop as long as that business for me and I don’t know how many people you don’t baby will come during the day or another time, who left and how much business he has lost because of unmotivated employee, so maybe because maybe they his employer does not treat her well, or maybe the relationship is not that good. So, people need you, you as a business owner you need to, you know, help your employees to find meaning in what they do to be what help them to be motivated to, to be looking forward to come to work in the morning, you know, they need to know why they do what they do and they need to find motivation in what they do, they should know that you know this is, you know, this is the best stuff, you know, they can decide to put their time into. So, I’m honored to share some of the things that will help you as a business owner to build a strong business relationship with your customers. One of the things that I want to share is you need to be very; you need to be resourceful.

One of the things that you can do to be resourceful, is you know sometimes people can come to you, depending on what you do and the size of your business. Sometimes you might not be able to meet the expectation of your customers 100%. If you know someone else who is able to do better than you. Please, you can refer them, like, please know I know that I can meet your expectation maybe 60%, but I know someone who can read your expectation 100%, most of the time as a business people, we think like we’re losing business but actually, you’ll, you’ll be surprised because that person. You have won his trust or heart trust, and they’ll be able to do referrals they’ll be able to give you referrals and they’ll be loyal to you because you’ve been able to tell them the truth. You don’t to admit that my product or my service, cannot be able to fulfill your need. 100%. And then something else is. You don’t just be the best that you can be, because once people are able to understand.

For example, train, whatever is given me that’s the best that I can get anywhere else, you are able to create that credibility to your customers to your employees like what we are getting here, this month. This business is doing the best to give us the best to create the best environment, give out the best services product, then people will trust you that people will be willing your employees will be willing to come and walk you or the customers will be, you know, will be willing to come back again and again and again, because once again, you know, depending on the size of the business that you have, you know, one of the key, or one of the problem that most businesses have is they burned a lot, they spent hundreds of 1000s of dollars or millions of dollars in advertisement, to get people to the door of their businesses, but it’s still difficult to find out whether you’ll be able to get, you know, to get the repeat sales to get the repeat sales and also customer retention.

But when you are able to build trust you’re able to provide you know to be the best that you could you can be, and also provide value to your customers, they know that you know the value that I’m getting from this business I cannot get it anywhere else. That definitely, you know you have customers who are able to come back again and again and be able to refer other people to come to your business. And then one last thing that I can share is you need to ask for feedback, ask your customers. How am I, how are we doing as a business, what do you like, what are some of the things that you know you want us to change, you know, so that we can make you, you can make your shopping experience even much better. So that way like it. It leaves room for you to be able to accommodate the opinions or the suggestions that your customers as well as your employees are offering you because you know employees, they want, you know, a friendly environment they want some things that will maybe systems that will help them, you know, do their work easier.

So if you constantly asking for their feedback, and once in a while you’re able to incorporate maybe in your strategic plan or business plan for the future implementation and customers or employees are able to see some of their opinions have been incorporated in your business then they will feel the ownership and the sense that, you know, we are part of our business we are that we are we are valued, our contribution is valued. And once again, as I conclude, you know people buy from people, they don’t buy from businesses, so we as business people we always need to remember that, like we need to be able to create strong relationships with other businesses you either business to business or business to customers, and together with our employees, because once again.  There was a documentary I was watching by the founder of Southwest Airlines, and he was saying like, for him, customer is not a key.

Because what happens if a customer slaps your employees, without no reason we used to say, you have done well. So, no, you need to stand for your employees because if your employees are happy and they’re happy and they know why they come to work, they will be able to go out there on the front desk receive people with joy with happiness and treat them well and if they treat them well those customers will feel satisfied and fulfilled and they will be able to come back again, and even refer other people. Thank you very much for watching and please let us know in case you have any topics that you want us to address in the future. Give us your comments and we’ll be very happy to incorporate what you want us to either improve or maybe even the topics that you have that, if we are able to talk about them. They will make your business better. Thank you very much.