It's All About Relationships

It’s a topic that comes up often on Savvy, whether our guests are talking about sales, customer service, networking or influence, it all ties back to building solid real relationships with people.

Back when I first started my own business, I thought building business relationships meant spending upwards of 3 hours or more on social media a day. After several months with minimal results, my business mentor told me to get off my buns and start networking at LIVE events. Ick, I had always hated parties or events where I knew no one, and had to talk to strangers. I did just as my mentor instructed and promptly set my calendar with several networking events per week.

Most of the events I set up were through meet-up and were no cost. I was looking to spend as little as possible and wanted to keep my cost down. After the first several networking events I was more frustrated than ever. After reflecting on my experiences, I knew why. We were not making true lasting connections with each other. In most cases, all of us ‘New Business Owners’ were hurrying about the room as quickly as possible handing out business card to as many folks as we could. Then the following day we’d all send e-mails to each other, saying something to the effect of how nice it was to meet one another, and then we’d pitch our service, product or information.

It’s no wonder this method did not yield much if any results. Why should I buy someone stuff, or they mine without having built a solid relationship on trust, reciprocity, or emotional connection?

This reminds me of what one of our guests, Teresa de Grosbois said during our interview together. We were speaking on the topic of relationship building and influence, and she advised, asking for a sale, or anything from a prospective client without having first built any meaningful relationship, is akin to you moving to a new neighborhood and your new neighbor asks to borrow your lawn mower on the first day you meet. You’d most likely think this person is off their rocker.

Over time I realized one very important thing when it comes to building business relationships, which translates to all relationships in life, and that is, they take time to build and foster.

So, if you are starting your own business, realize that in order to be successful, building solid trusted connections with people is paramount and it will take time. I think we’ve all confused at times, the great successes of mega-companies like Amazon, Zappos and Starbucks, believing they were vastly successful day one. It took years of work for them to build the positive solid trusted relationships they did to reach where they are today. Take the time to build sturdy; trust worthy connections with those around you, and you'll be glad you did.

To hear our Interview with Teresa de Grosbois on this subject, listen here: http://bit.ly/10ARta9

By Christina Nitschmann of SavvyCentralRadio.webs.com