The Importance of Relationship Building
If a stranger came up to you and asked for $5, would you give it to them? Probably not, but if a friend did, your response would be very different. Like it or not, selling is political. It’s all about relationships, who you know. And connecting with them.
You can’t just throw your product at someone and demand they buy it. They require coaxing, they need to be incentivized, what’s in it for them? This is very important to remember in selling yourself as well.
If someone goes to the trouble of scratching your back their back gets itchy too. It’s programmed into all humans, animals, and plants-and other lifeforms without backs. You can’t be idealistic. You just have to work with it. And take advantage of it.
You should want people to owe you favors, feel obligated to go with you, in a business sense. In a personal sense that is very bad and downright evil. This is accomplished by building relationships, and sucking up to people. Ingratiate yourself to them. It increases brand awareness and is great for generating leads.
Make yourself important, be a priority. And make their relationship with you worth it. Anything you can do to make it harder to say no, do it. As long as it’s legal, and won’t come back to bite you in the butt.
It’s also the only way to get into the coveted, trusted, inner circle. Where you hear valuable information that your, “just buy this, it’s great, yahhhhhh!!!” competition won’t. It’s better to be on the inside than the outside.
Relationship building also creates a free volunteer marketing team. Which is the best marketing team money cannot buy. People are going to talk about you, encourage them to talk about you. Convince them to, when they do it without any bribentivization, it is genuine. That is a loyal person you need to keep around, in the loop.
You won’t get short term, immediate results with relationship building. But the long term results are well worth it. You never know when it will be convenient and useful to know someone. And what that someone knows.
Networking may be a pain, but it’s not broke so don’t even think about fixing it. It works and serves a basic, human function. That greatly benefits your business. Take advantage of this invaluable, innate free marketing tool. Go make friends, lots and lots of friends.