Building Business Relationships to Last

Okay, you’ve made that great first impression. Now what? It’s time to build a strong relationship with this person. Your goal here is to begin asking questions and listening to find common ground.

Find out where they’re from, maybe their hometown, college, or even their favorite sport or team. This will build a stronger relationship and conversational material for future meetings or chats on the phone. The information you bring to the table in this relationship combined with your value, skills and beliefs can take this to higher roads.

What you put into this relationship is usually what you get in return. The greater the value you give this person, the stronger the business relationship will become. This will lead to possible future ties to more relationships with their clients or business partners. Giving them leads or introducing them to possible business relationships can also build a strong bond.

Not every relationship provides value, but this is something you might not know in the beginning. Consider it practice and learn from it. You might be valuable to them, and sometimes you have to give before you receive. It goes back to that saying, “When you help others reach their needs, in return you will too.

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Helping Others Will Build Relationships

Think about it. It’s absolutely the one of the truest statements I know. Here’s an example. This can relate to a lot of different situations. In this case it was an unhappy person/customer:

I had a customer on the phone the other day and he was stating he needed help or he would have to cancel a particular product. You have been there. You don’t understand something, but a simple solution could be answered by someone else who knows the next step or solution to your problem. At this point, I’m starting this conversation with his wall in front of me, so to say. I have to break this wall down before I can even go any further.

Listen to the customer or possible future relation. Find out what is the real problem and find a solution that will help him and benefit you at the same time. Helping them with their problem and not putting it off shows your relation you are there to help them.

Now, I helped him overcome what turned out to be a simple problem. Not so simple for some, but I was able to help him in this circumstance. This was the first step in the process of relationship building. Helping him gained his trust and attention. He was grateful, now that I have his attention. I started to ask him some key questions about what he does for a living. By doing this I am building a relationship for future integration at this point without him even knowing it. Not only did I save a customer from cancelling, I solved his problem, and I built a relationship. I got all his contact information and followed up with him a few days later. He was thrilled to hear from me. He started to tell me more about what he did; once again I gave him some more advice.

One week later he called me to thank me because of the advice I gave him. It relieved him of a major stress factor he was having and increased his sales and production by 30%. Now that I had opened a door to a new business relationship and I started to tell him a little about our company. We are now integrating with each other, with profits I must add. So, you can see how valuable helping others will build relations and in this example bring in profits.

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