You have to be intentional and authentic when building relationships with your customers. It’s the only way they’ll stay loyal.
Becky Chambless, a Certified Fundraising Executive,brings her unique perspective in the nonprofit world to share gems about how to focus on relationship building to grow your business.
Read on for relationship building tips and why it’s so important for your business.
Why relationship building is vital in your business
If you don’t know your customers, you don’t know the most ethical and honest way to tell them to invest. You only achieve that by creating a relationship. When building the relationship, it has to be intentional and authentic. If somebody trusts the work being done and trusts the leadership, your customers will stay with you.
Whether you’re nonprofit or for-profit, you have to create a seat for your customers or your donors to be part of your story. Because if you’re not intentional about your story, it’s going to write itself.
Think about what you want the story to say, how is should be portrayed, and what relationship building will you be doing to make that happen? Beautiful things can happen when we take the time to care, listen, and build deep, authentic relationships with our customers or our donors.
Using nonprofit examples - how you develop relationships with customers to be more courageous in asking for what you need
Developing the right culture
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” You can have all the greatest strategies, but if you don’t have the culture within your business or nonprofit to promote what you’re putting out there, it’s not going to work. So, for example, if you are the children’s advocate, at the domestic violence shelter, working with the child that might have seen some abuse, you are just as important to the culture of philanthropy as the fundraiser, the person asking for the money.
The same with the HR or finance director. The culture of philanthropy needs to be woven throughout your nonprofits and everybody, we’re all in this for one mission. The same can be said for your business. The culture should be instilled through everyone. That’s important because it ends up seeping into who you are, which then comes out in the work you do.
Your customers will see it and feel it; they’ll know when there’s an authentic, genuine business owner or fundraiser in front of them. And it’ll be a place where they’ll want to invest their dollars into for a product, service, or cause.
Planning
The most significant piece is the intentionality in your planning gives you permission to do what you believe is the best work. Your idea of the “best work” will change over time. You might try something and figure out that wasn’t the right thing. So, you have to be flexible enough to pivot when it’s not working.
But the other side of intentional planning is being able to measure any new ideas to the plan and see if it fits. If it doesn’t fit, you can decide to move on to another new idea or decide if it’s important to enough to rework the plan.
Intentionality
Intentionality permits you to say no to things that don’t align with your mission. Being intentional with not only developing but cultivating the relationship you already have are important. Don’t underestimate your loyal customers or loyal donors because they are there for you. They are part of your fabric, and they are woven into the work that you’re doing.
Don’t neglect them. Have a plan for them, too.
How can you give back with your business
If you are a person running a business, you have a gift. Start thinking about how that could fit into a nonprofit that you care about. What is the thing that lights your heart up and gets you excited to talk about it.
Maybe you run a bookkeeping business, and you can step in and serve in an accounting capacity on a board or a finance committee. Or perhaps you’re an HR consultant, and you could step into a domestic violence shelter once a quarter and offer a resume, coaching class, or interviewing skills. You don’t have to commit 20 hours of your life. If you want to feed people, call your food bank, call your soup kitchen. If you want to rescue puppies, call your puppy rescue.
There are so many opportunities to get plugged in. It doesn’t have to be something that takes up all your time.
About Becky
Becky Chambless, CFRE is the President and Owner of Ember Consulting, LLC. She is an experienced Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE) with a demonstrated history of creating long-term, sustainable, relationship-based funding in the nonprofit sector, as well as corporate community relations strategy in the for-profit sector.
Becky spent almost a decade in the nonprofit sector leading fundraising and donor development programs for AWAIC (Abused Women’s Aid in Crisis), Alaska Pacific University, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Alaska. Most recently, she was the Vice President of Community Relations for Wells Fargo in Alaska.
An active leader in Alaska, Becky currently serves as the Board President of Beacon Hill, an organization serving children in the foster care system or at risk of entering the system; Vice President of External Affairs for the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Alaska Chapter board; and as a committee member of 100+ Women Who Care Anchorage.
Becky received her B.A. in Business Administration and Management with a Nonprofit Management Emphasis from Alaska Pacific University. She earned her Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) designation in March 2016.
A lifelong Alaskan, Becky currently resides in Anchorage and spends her free time volunteering, traveling, attending performing arts productions, camping, hiking Alaska’s beautiful mountains, and spending quality time with her husband James and their son Logan.
