Creating and maintaining meaningful business relationships requires people to venture beyond basic online interactions.

You need to understand that online networking is usually not going to be enough to cultivate the vital relationships a company needs to sustain its growth. While your involvement on Facebook, Twitter, etc., is worth the investment, you need to look offline for additional opportunities. And in order to forge meaningful relationships — whether offline or on — Mashable contributor David Nour writes that you must stand out above the noise. Introductions are vital in this process. During that…

OpenView’s Ori Yankelev describes five fundamental steps you should take to get the most out of your sales force automation tools.

Customer-focused companies will stop at nothing to please their customers.

Amy Buckner Chowdhry, chief executive and co-founder of AnswerLab, looks at what this entails in a follow-up to a previous article for Inc. Her original post had five things customer-obsessed companies did. Sticking with that formula, the author continues with five additional practices. Here are some examples: Companies that highly value customers will get feedback in unconventional ways. Whereas the typical company will simply ask customers directly, inventive companies will find out better ways to ask that same question. And they will…

Your customers want to feel loved.

Most companies realize this. Some care, others don’t. Guess which of these companies is likely to survive over the long-term. Alienating customers is not a lucrative decision. Creating a company that values its customers above all else simply requires a wholly dedicated team, from top to bottom. Dr. John R. Miller, principal at Pretium Solutions, explains how this is accomplished in a recent post on the subject. Exceptional customer support has to rank high at your company before you can expect results, writes Dr. Miller. Your front-line employees must…

In a post for Eyes on Sales, Colleen Francis examines what you can do to close an existing customer when your competition keeps lowering their price. Focus on testimonials. “Clients tend to believe other clients more than they believe you,” she writes. “So find customers who already switched for a lower price and then came back to you because their experience with the competitor was less than satisfying.” Francis says you should be collecting testimonials from every client you do business with regardless of how well your business is currently doing. Learn…

 

In a post for Eyes on Sales, Kevin Eikenberry outlines several uncommon approaches you can use for better presentations. More visuals, less words. Eikenberry says many PowerPoint presentations have too many words, and suggests replacing the words on your slides with images; but pictures hat help tell your story. More emotion, less logic. “Give your audience the facts they need, but don’t overload them,” he writes. It’s also important, he says, to speak to the emotional part of people as well. More stories, less “facts”. Eikenberry suggests creating stories around your…