One of the things that really was a cornerstone of my success as a business owner and operator was the understanding that client retention is not only closely tied to client satisfaction and relationship building, its also very much partnership driven. Early on I was able to partner with clients that I really admired and in doing so pushed me to become a company that others would also admire.

How do you make the general public or your clients raving fans of your brand, service or product? It’s easier than you think but also complex especially when you start thinking about the current political landscape. Here are the things that worked for me.

Companies have to stand for something. If you are wishy washy on issues or your core values then you’re not going to have much to be admired for. Make sure you have a strong set of core values and stick to them.

Make sure the service or product you are offering is inline with your core values and the values of your clients as well. This is important, we will come back to this in a minute.

Make sure that you as a company, business owner and operator are humble, acknowledge mistakes and take ownership for the good and the bad something I keep coming back to.

However that’s only half the story, in order for this to be a true partnership you need to be raving fans of your clients and their services as well. Its not enough to do this in private. We have found that you need to show your clients that you are genuinely interested in their cause, services and are committed to their success as much as you are on your own. Here are some things that we’ve done in the past to strengthen these partnerships.

Show up to conferences, mixers or other public events where your clients and get behind their cause helping them to build their business. After all, they are helping you further your businesses.

Boost their posts on social media, like and comment on posts they make on LinkedIn and connect with their staff members and leave recommendations.

Invest in the companies who have partnered with you by giving back when they have fundraisers, or other awareness campaigns.

When you invest in the relationships with your clients it will in turn strengthen your relationships with them and the end result is amazing. Now only are you investing in retention, and future renewals, sure thats great. More importantly however you really are creating fans and when they are your fan, not only are they going to be fun to work with they will start attracting other clients that would be a good fit for your product or service.

Forget about referral programs when you have that level of brand loyalty you will see a natural growth not only fostered by word of mouth from your fans but the external show of participation and partnerships will help those observing you better align on your core mission, vision and values attracting them to your brand without knowing anything about your core services. Creating fans helps foster and create admirers in the public who then approach you looking for the same experience they are seeing, it’s important that when this starts happening that you double down on the approach we’ve been talking about and convert them from admirer to fan.

Its important to remember that you do not get to fandom immediately, it’s a journey, and people move from observer, to admirer to fan is a process and a journey and it’s your job as the business owner, and operator to lead them down that path. This has to be done with intention, and is a drum beat that your entire staff must beat the same way, with consistency and with intention.