A relationship is something you often think of when you are close to someone or when you've made a connection with a person.

In business the relationship with your customers is what keeps them coming back to you for years to come.

If you are capable of building a strong relationship at every stage of your customers experience that bond will grow until you've developed a sort of cult like following with them.

If you think about companies with raving fans like Apple they have a core group of customers who will use their products no matter what.

They release products and are completely sold out within minutes and by just having one of these products you are a sort of "cool" status symbol.

Now how do we develop the relationship with the consumer to that high of a degree? It starts with being hyper aware of exactly what the customer journey through your funnel looks like.

From that what does the experience look like? Are they complaining or dropping off at any point? Is there anything unique that makes them go "wow" when they get off the phone with you or leave from a consultation?

You can start to understand by putting yourself into the shoes of the consumer. Work through your funnel from your social channels, to your website, email, phone call and if you have one initial consultation.

As you're working through this write everything down. What's boring? Indifferent? Irritating? What does your content say about you? Is everything congruent?

Take each of these things and adjust and modify based on what you see and what feedback says about your brand. The relationship is developed by providing an incredible experience, over delivering on what you offer and then continuing to wow them long term.

For example, in the boutique gym industry, like the CrossFit industry, it's common practice to have someone in for a consultation before they attend classes. Now going from the consultation straight into classes makes it hard to develop that 1-on-1 relationship.

To combat this and separate us from the pack we have a 3 session assessment and a 1-on-1 fitness for life foundations program the client has to complete before they can move into group classes.

This allows us to attach the client with a coach and allows the coach to develop a strong relationship with the client before they enter group classes. Then in group classes they still meet with their coach anywhere from 4 times per year all the way up to 1 time per week.

In terms of client happiness and longevity this is the best thing we've ever done and moves us out of the commodity market and into a market that we own and have created for ourselves. It's not about the class at that point it's about the relationship and level of comfort approaching the coach with anything.

If you are truly interested in developing a relationship with your consumers it takes looking at your entire pipeline and understanding friction points, opportunities to wow the consumer and always being aware of what they say and how they feel.

The more opportunities you have to showcase your unique brand personality the better the relationship will build in the long run.

Gone are the days when companies could just hire automated machines to handle communication and outsource help centers.

Because by outsourcing, though you save money, you can never get them to understand the flow of your brand and where you want it to be. Customers will pay more for an experience or the ability to talk with someone they can relate to.

Be REAL. Be HUMAN. Be SOCIAL

Have you ever walked into a business and immediately noticed that something is different about the business? Maybe they have an interesting name, the way the place is decorated is organized in a different way than your used to, the employee are probably even seemingly playing the part ever so well.

When you're in that situation you remember the experience, the conversations, the decorations and the name of the business. Why? It's because you were immediately immersed into the culture of the company and everyone who represents that culture believed so strongly in it that they portrayed it perfectly during your visit.

Maybe that culture is so strong that you notice it in their social presence.

Is there a certain conversation style?
Are they a bit goofy?
Do they respond on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc and immediately make you lol?
Is the information they put out organized around all of this?

You're probably wondering how you build this into your business structure so it manifests itself outwardly and without issue from your staff.

The key to building this is to instill it into everything and really develop an understanding of your style. Are you focused on being different, serious, goofy, funny, witty etc?

Whatever your focus is you must instill this into EVERYTHING. If you are a bit goofy and off the wall you probably need a familiar greeting when people walk in your door, call you or send you a message from social.

For example our greeting at StoneAgeFuel is:

"Welcome to StoneAgeFuel, where the streets are paved with gold"

It doesn't matter if the person walking in has been a member for several years or has had zero contact with us. Everyone gets the greeting every time they walk in the door.

Now organizing the aura in your business must reflect your culture. If you are a bit goofy your website content should reflect that and your physical location should have fun colors, but the part most people mess up on is getting their staff on board.

Have you ever walked into a Cold Stone (an ice cream store) and the staff loathes singing when you give them a tip? This is a scenario you must avoid to ensure you don't ruin the experience of people coming into your business, because your employees hate it.

To get your employees on board there are several strategies, but I really like immersing them right from the beginning. When interviewing them ask questions that are based off of your culture and try to get a little bit of wit out of them.

You can ask questions like:

Describe the color yellow to me
Teach me something new in 5 min....
A penguin walks in through the door wearing a sombrero. What does he say and why is he here?

The point is not to put them on the spot. The point is to see how onboard they are going to be with using wit and charm in your business and how much they will go out of their way to interact and be fun.

Once you have everything going and everyone on board the next biggest issue it maintaining that culture. It's important that you continue to put it everywhere and make sure nothing gets brushed aside. If it becomes something everyone believes in and WANTS to do. Congrats, you have built a business with culture!

The point of all of this is to continue to provide the customer an experience to remember. With content being everywhere and available to everyone you need to push to give people an experience with your brand that they won't forget. That experience shines through with an amazing company culture and experience strategy in place.

Now your action items after reading this is to define your culture. What makes you different? What do people say about your business? How do you respond to people in person? On social media? How do your employees interact?

Write all this down and compile it into a culture document that you continue to build by digging deeper and deeper into your company until you're confident that you have something that makes you unique and provide an experience to remember!