What do your aunt and uncles, sales reps, and mailman all have in common? They’re part of your relationship marketing sphere!
Your relationship marketing sphere (“sphere”) is made up of:
- Family: related to you (i.e., your brother)
- Business: related to your business (i.e., your sales representatives)
- Friends: social relationships (i.e., your HBIC)
- Acquaintance: people you have 1-2 interactions with (i.e., friend of a friend or someone you met in line at a restaurant)
- Servicers: people that provide a service or product you pay for (i.e., your landlord)
Relationship Marketing Sphere: The Relationship-Sales Matrix
Relationships vary in depth. But as you deepen a relationship, the wider the opportunity margin in your sphere becomes.
Think of relationships like a pool. At the one end, they’re shallow with not much water. On the other end of the pool, you’d drown if you didn’t tread water. As relationships deepen, opportunities flow like water.
Identifying opportunities is much simpler than you think. Just keep in touch with your people. Share your life’s ups and downs. And ask to help them.
Relationship Marketing Sphere Nuances
As with all things there’s good and bad sides. Relationship marketing takes a lot of work and the knowledge that not all relationships are transactional.
Pros:
- Warm leads: while “warm lead” is a joke if you know sales at all, its the concept of it all that we care about. People who are pre-qualified (nurtured leads) make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.
- Easier to close and sign multiple deals
- Longer relationships (and more fulfilling life in our opinion)
Cons:
- Not all relationships are transactional, that doesn’t mean transactions can’t come from your relationship marketing sphere
- Takes time to create and build your relationship marketing sphere sometimes it can be years before a single referral
- If you ruin one relationship or mess up a transaction from a referred lead, it might mess up both the referrer and the client
All in all, it’s up to you whether to take on the role of building a sphere, but if you feel better having a plan in place, contact us!