Customer Bonding Makes Clients

By John H. Melchinger, The Marketing Coach™

There are progressive levels of bonding between customers and practitioners.

1. Customers recognize your name. You hope they remember it!
2. Customers develop a modest desire for your product. Resistance lessens.
3. As the seller-buyer dyad develops, the buyer begins to feel that the seller recognizes the buyer as an individual. The buyer certainly wants to, anyway.
4. The marketer "joins in" with the buyer's community and actively fosters similar- values interaction with the buyer.
5. Ultimately, advocacy becomes the bond; the buyer is so sold on the practitioner that s/he is willing to become an informal salesperson for that practitioner, advocating that others join the ranks of the practitioner's clientele. And we all know the power of word-of-mouth endorsements, even though so few practitioners systematically develop this special power to its peak in their practices.