Everything Old is New Again
We have a blatant repurposing of a recent State Farm commercial on our website where we talk about the 30 year plus history of our company. The line goes, “We started our business when MTV played music videos, a gallon of gas was under a dollar and control systems used “real” relays. As a result, we have seen a lot, done a lot, know a lot and have learned a lot of lessons that we can apply to your project or program.” I see the reality of this concept reinforced on at least a weekly basis and I believe we should seriously consider adding the words “and we’ve created a lot of great relationships along the way” to the statement.
I am in a great position with my role in the company to have visibility as to where and how our “new” projects and customers are generated. A sizeable number of new relationships are formed from people looking into us on our website, reading our blogs, interacting with our partners and gaining an appreciation for our value from referrals of other customers. Those are wonderful connections and we value them immensely. There is another source, however, that is even cooler than those listed above. Avanceon’s key source of “new” customers (that is difficult to measure with SEO – sorry Google ) results from relationships that are rekindled from old customers and partners, who’ve moved to new places and remember the positive experience or personal connections that they had with Avanceon in the past and seek to reestablish those relationships. We regard these connections, where we’ve built trust and established our credibility above all others because they illustrate that the value we provide transcends years if not decades of time. It is the ultimate compliment for a business to do business with a customer at 3 different companies over 20 years.
In the past week alone, I have heard from (and reengaged with) a food customer from 2012, CPG customer from 2002 and a steel customer from 1992 (to name a few). In each one of those engagements the overriding theme for why they came back was the caliber of our people relationships and the value we provided in some phase or another of the project cycle.
My thought is that, in life in general but specifically in business, every person and company creates a “Relationship Savings Account” with each customer through our interface and interactions. In the case where the person leaves the current customer early, the account has a positive balance and it feels like a desire exists to cash that balance in and feed it further. As a result, “old” customers become “new” customers again and again and allow us to “see a lot, do a lot, experience a lot, learn a lot and make even more great relationships”.
That’s how I see it. How do you feel the value of your relationships transfers and ports from company to company, business to business?
For more about Avanceon’s culture and people, click here.
Image Source: Freepik