The WE Relationship

A friend sent a book review my way yesterday of Steve Yastrow’s WE: The Ideal Customer Relationship. I have posted the review below. This is a very relevant topic for today’s marketers. As an agency, we are continually pushing our clients to engage their customers online, to listen to them and to communicate with them individually. This is very hard for many companies to do. Especially big ones who want so desperately to control everything about their communications efforts. The chart that differentiates between a WE relationship and an US & Them relationship says it all.

Steve Yastrow on the WE Relationship
I love the premise from Steve Yastrow’s recently-published book, WE: The Ideal Customer Relationship. In the opening chapter, Yastrow writes …
Relationships have become powerful differentiators. Customers can’t tell if your product is better than your competitor’s product, but they can tell if they have a better relationship with you than with your competitor.
If relationships are such powerful differentiators, what is the most productive, profitable, and sustainable relationship?
The We relationship.
In a We relationship, you think less about what separates you and more about what intertwines you.
In contrast, if your customer’s view of your relationship is not “We” but “Us & Them,” he will focus more on what he can get from you”and on what he believes you get from him”and less on how you can collaborate to reach your goals together. [Steve Yastrow, SOURCE]

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For those needing to see this premise in a chart, peep the following from pg. 13 of WE: The Ideal Customer Relationship …