I would like to welcome you to the first-ever session of the WalkSessions, a content series where information on the go. And it’s more like a new venture that I’m beginning where I share my ideas that I get randomly as I take a walk.
So for today on the first episode, we will discuss the different stages of a relationship and we are skewing it towards a business relationship and what have mainly came top of mind when I was doing this walk session are there are two main dimensions that business relationship can go in through and this can either be positive side or negative.
Positive Stages of a Business Relationship
Now, as we are assessing the positive dimension, there are three major stages.
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Indifference Stage
Here the customer does not know where to place you whether they trust you or not to trust you because they haven’t had any past experience with you.
So it’s only with your encounters or your continued efforts, for example, delivering the project on time, communicating efficiently day after day and all this if it’s more in the positive sense and you’re doing everything right this will push you to the next stage.
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The Confidence Stage
In the confidence stage, the clients are getting more reassured that you can deliver based on past experience that they’ve had with you, the past encounters and if all this goes well and you keep on delivering efficiently and really they are so happy with your work that pushes the third and most crucial stage.
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Optimism Stage
In this stage, they have formed a belief that you can get the job done and this is really the best place you always want to be in.
And I have had some encounters with clients and they really love what I do and they keep it coming and all of us would like to be in this space.
The Negative Stages of a Business Relationship
So when you look at the flip side to the not so nice stages, these do unfortunately happen sometimes, Usually and this could be at the start of your career or maybe it’s the first time having a type of client who maybe probably very difficult to deal with.
And if you look at it, it still has similar sentiments as the positive one.
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Indifference Stage
In this stage, the clients don’t know exactly who you are and in case whatever you’re doing does not come out well or you don’t deliver on time, or you deliver things that they don’t really want and doesn’t meet the client’s expectations (not understanding the project objective ).
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The Questionable Confidence Stage
Based on that first encounter that wasn’t so good, they’re not sure if the next encounter is going to come out nicely or your communication was not very clear. So, if by bad chance, you still again deliver poorly, you communicate not so well and the client is not satisfied with what you’re delivering, It drops you in the worst bomb ever. Which the pessimism stage.
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The Pessimism Stage
At this stage they have a confident belief that you always not deliver on time and are inefficient and to be truthful, I don’t think you’ll have a very you’re that the relationship with the client will last long, most likely both of you will go your separate ways and that will be the end of your business relations.
So with that being said, all this does take time. And it’s, it’s something that is that you work with the client over time and you keep on doing pushing it and you have to keep in mind that you have to always monitor to ensure that you never get into the negative side. Or even if you’re on the negative side, how you flip it to go into the positive side. But that would be a topic for another day. So that’s all from me from now.