The old saying ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know’ is certainly a little simplistic, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t ring true in the world of business, where forging relationships with the right people is hugely important indeed. Whether with customers, business partners or even local authorities, being successful means maintaining those good relationships – let’s take a look at three reasons how doing this will help you grow your business.

Ensuring Customer Loyalty

It’s very simple really, if you maintain a strong positive relationship with your customers, then they’ll be loyal to you and your business, which is a major asset to have. Reliable income or profit each and every month is a lot more valuable than peaks and troughs of success, and will really help your business grow. You can’t take that next step and expand without knowing that you’ve got a good base to build on, but having a strong and loyal following will give you this. Never lose those valuable brand loyalists as they’re often what keeps the best companies going strong.

Building your Reputation

Businesses and employees who are known publically to have excellent relationships with the customers will not only retain them; they’ll attract new ones too. In fact, there are a great many companies out there that barely advertise at all, or spend very little on marketing. Up-and-coming electric car manufacturer Tesla is one such example – they rely on word of mouth for most of their business, but this is only achievable by maintaining excellent customer relationships. Go that extra mile with everyone you do business with, and you’ll find that there are even more people that want to do business with you. This extends to the online space too – social media is a powerful tool in 2015 and is all about creating new relationships.

Building Business Contacts

Sometimes that next step in business is something that you can’t achieve on your own. Sometimes you need to have that contact that will open new doors for you, which means that networking and developing relationships is so very important. There are so many ways that you can do this too, whether you’re doing things virtually on a site like LinkedIn, or attending networking events held locally to you. As an example, GVA Worldwide maintain that it is their strong relationships that help them secure the deals that benefit their clients.

And there you have it. Building your business and building relationships go hand in hand together. See every new meeting as an opportunity to grow a new contact and you’ll soon find your business fortunes improving, and opportunities for growth revealing themselves.