Section: Understanding Business

The five stages are generic in nature. However, they generally apply to managing customer relationships.
Reach: Establish credibility with the prospective customer. The credibility is established for both yourself and by extension your organization as a valued business partner.
Acquisition: Establish your status as a valued business partner. This is done by understand the customer and their critical business needs.
Develop: Continue to effectively increase the maturity of your relationship with the customer. This is accomplished by continually gaining a more thorough understanding of critical business needs.
Retention: Demonstrate repeated value to the customer. This is accomplished by providing opportunities to measure progress against stated targets to demonstrate success.
Loyalty: Establish yourself as a trusted advisor and the customer as an advocate. This can be accomplished by adopting a consultative-led approach with a focus on the solving complex business challenges for the customer.

Section: Credibility and Rapport