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hi i'm christina spelaine and i'm here today to share with you the biggest secret that i have learned about being successful in business and in life and that is the art and science of cultivating long-term relationships i'm especially proud to be here today presenting at the rob sham theater on the beautiful boston college campus because as it turns out i've been here before over 29 years ago as a student at bc there i am in the middle with the blonde hair and the boston college sweatshirt on this is how we study for finals the bc way this picture was taken over three decades ago but i'm proud to announce that i still am friends with a lot of the people in this photo the woman on the very right who's also named christina is my very best friend christina and i met freshman year on newton campus and we became roommates now whether it was because we had similar personalities or because i had a car freshman year and she needed a ride but we became best friends today christina is a partner at a national law firm in new york city after we left bc we made sure to keep in touch and to be a source of support for each other over the years she knows my family and i know her family and although we haven't connected as much as we would like after our time here we certainly make an effort to be involved in each other's lives a few years ago i had needed a complicated legal concept explained to me so i picked up the phone during the week called christina and she was able to explain it to me in no problem why did she pick up the phone being one of the best attorneys in new york during a weekday and help me out it's because we have cultivated a relationship of trust over the years and this is called relationship roi for you non-business majors out there roi simply means return on investment here we are graduating from bc i graduated from the carroll school of management with double degrees in finance and human resources i absolutely loved my time at bc and cherished the bonds that i had made here and the relationships that have been lifelong and have started on this very campus before i go any further i'm wondering would you mind taking a brief survey for me how likely are you to recommend after the five minutes i've been speaking to you my tedx talk to a friend or colleague member very likely unlikely undecided anyone need me to repeat the question it seems silly after five minutes that i don't ask you to evaluate me doesn't it i mean how many of you were thinking wow this woman is majorly codependent but big business does this every single day that's because big business suffers from what i call premature evaluation premature evaluation pev or peeve as i like to call it is simply to put in a seinfeld term level jumping the relationship by evaluating it way too soon in the process what are the symptoms of premature evaluation you might want to know well if you're a business and you're surveying your customers before you've even had one interaction with them then you might be suffering from premature evaluation if you're a salesperson and you're asking for the sale without even understanding the pain points of your customers then you might be suffering from premature evaluation if you're a college senior and you made your decision about what job to take after one interview after one college job fair then you two might be suffering from premature evaluation premature evaluation is like going on a first date and before dinner's even served your date says to you now tell me on a scale of one to ten would you like one to two kids two to three or three or more you would go running for the hills a telltale sign of premature evaluation is called surveilitis cerveeitis is businesses constant need to gather intel on its customers by over surveying them here are a few examples i do some online shopping okay i do a fair amount of online shopping and when i'm online shopping what i what i don't like to happen is when i'm in my groove and up pops a survey it's like okay the other day i was on a popular athletic firm's website and i was looking at a top and i picked my color i picked my size i put it in my cart and all of a sudden it was out of stock it's like okay well this company thought this is a great time to find out if you'd recommend us to your friend or family member i i don't i just i don't think so no i wouldn't because not only did you not have my top but to top it all off you picked a really bad time to survey me some organizations survey after every single interaction this is an app to purchase groceries so i purchase my groceries go about my my way get my groceries everything's good maybe a week later i need some more groceries so i go onto my app again and boom how was your order from a week ago how was the driver did they get you everything you needed how were their substitutions my driver from a week ago i'm fairly confident that if i if my life depended on it i could not pick that driver out of a police lineup and not only that if i didn't get my kids their pop tarts i would have been on that phone right away back to to your company and tell you that you have not seen somebody hit five five five five stars as quickly as a working mom who's ordering groceries between business meetings and this company is taking that metric as an indication of how well they're doing in business hey guys look we got all fives again we are on fire the need for business to gather data as social proof for their shareholders happens all the time the last time i checked profit was a better form of social proof why don't we focus on that by keeping our customers happy to gain more profit but corporations like millennials like instant gratification like a trigger finger on a dating app big business is swiping left on their customers because they're not even giving the relationship a chance and customers in turn are swiping left on big business and rejecting them because they're not getting their needs met in our capture hungry society we believe that taking a picture of an experience encapsulates the whole experience if we take a picture that we were at yellowstone park and post about it and our friends like it that's all that matters really big business is confusing taking a snapshot of a relationship with the entire relationship it's hurting business profit though and this is what we have to realize it takes five times more to get a new client or customer than it does to retain an old one five times and you might be interested to know that customers usually spend 67 percent more after their third year of being your customer than in the first two why would you alienate them in the first two years of business when with a little time and love you might be able to turn a million dollar book of business into at least a 1.67 million dollar book of business but the question remains what is loyalty how do we measure loyalty this is the loyalty equation that i've come up with now you math majors this is not a mathematically correct equation so just want to let you know that authenticity consistency and value over time equals loyalty time is the key data element with time we can perfect our authenticity with time we become more consistent and with time we create better value for our customers here's an example of a company that does loyalty very well tesla ceo elon musk is adamant that transparency is part of their company culture and not just transparency when the news is good but transparency when the news is bad as well if you're a ceo of a car company you do not want this to be your social proof and on the internet car self-combusting never good what musk could have done is swept it under the rug buried it in different business articles but he didn't he blogged it out to his entire tesla community the key word here is community he was able to tell them what happened what they're going to do to prevent it from happening in the future and what they're going to do to compensate this poor fellow whose car just blew up loyalty is something that we have to focus on every day because loyalty is important to our customers we have to remember in a diverse and ever-changing market well-managed relationships are still the best currency it might sound cheesy but it's true this was a business meeting and this is holly holly and i go way back during this business meeting well i should add that holly holly's corporate headquarters is in madison wisconsin and in madison wisconsin they are very proud of their dairy after our business meeting holly went out and got me the cheese head and i put it on and we laughed about it and we took the picture this is a great picture and i love it because it shows the true value and loyalty of the relationship and quite frankly the fun of it all we must remember that relationships are like compounded interest the greater and more time that that they the greater time that the relationship has the more value it ends up having 67 percent more value here's a great quote about warren buffett warren buffett the billionaire earned 99 of his wealth after age 50 and 97 after age 65. gives us a little hope doesn't it warren buffett is an excellent investor but the world is full of excellent investors billionaire warren buffett's secret is he's been a great investor for over 80 years so what is your relationship investment strategy i'll give you some things that you should think about to help develop your own relationship investment strategy ask how you can best support them them meaning your clients them meaning your customers them being your family members them being your partners or your friends this is important listen to understand their pain my mother would always say two ears one mouth use them in that proportion respond to problems quickly show them appreciation in ways that benefit them everyone wants to see the benefit of the relationship provide consistent value like the loyalty equation admit your mistakes and make them right think elon musk in this one focus on responsive support include them in your success and finally create community so as promised today i shared with you my secrets for being successful in life and in business and i've provided the blueprint to develop your own relationship investment strategy my question is now what the thing they can't teach you in business school is to resist the urge for instant results and instead take that leap of faith that's necessary to believe in the value of relationships over time the bottom line is it takes a lot of energy to make relationships great and emerging business leaders should think more about putting that energy into the front of the relationship creating value instead of the back where they have to take five times more effort to get a result what if future business leaders stopped putting their energy into collecting data on their customers and instead reinvested that energy into making their customers happy wow what a concept the result would be winning customers for life instead of capturing them for the short term and when your lifelong customers are happy you'll be too busy counting your business profits to send them a survey thank you