Hey Old Business, Try to Keep Up.

The older generation of business man understands a very important principal about building business that the younger generation has trouble with. Build the relationship, build the business! If you have no relationship with your customer, it is easy for them to switch somewhere else. If your relationship is solid, they most likely won't leave on a whim. Simply put, if you do your job well, people will come and do business with you, period.

This strategy is the way to keep customers doing business with you forever. The new question is, is a good relationship with your customer enough?

Today is the design age. Great design is everywhere and, more importantly, a requirement. Everything from toilet brushes, waste baskets, sink faucets, and even tissue boxes are designed to perfection. Why? Because people associate the outside with the inside. In the same way, fancy restaurants "design" or plate the food before it arrives to your table.

While the older style of relationship business building is still key, new business doesn't come as easy anymore. More tools and resources make it easier to start a business today and therefore the competition is greater and more fierce. In this design age, your prospect is bombarded with marketing messages every day. The options are simply to vast in number for your prospect to consider every one. Instead they must narrow down their options in the least amount of time, and hope to gain the best results. How will they do this? It's quite simple, if they don't know anything about your company, the public image you put out there is all they have to go by.

Your relationship building will keep your customer forever, but your great design will give them a reason to walk in that door.