Author: Brandy M Miller

Building Relationships Versus Bartering: Creating Connections Versus Conducting Transactions

At Path To Connections™, we emphasize the importance and power of building long-term relationships with other people. Those relationships aren’t limited to connections with other business owners, either. Every relationship you build expands the number of people who know you and know what you can do, and accelerates your potential for success.

Relationship Building and Bartering Are Different

Relationship building takes time and involves multiple encounters where the two of you explore your compatibility and alignment as you work to find common ground while learning more about one another. While the goal remains finding ways to benefit one another, there’s no specified agenda for how you’ll be doing that.

While you may barter with someone you’ve formed a relationship with at some point in time, relationship building and bartering are not the same thing.

Bartering involves making a strategic exchange of goods or services for the mutual benefit of both parties. It’s a short-term connection that lasts as long as it takes to complete the transaction.

Bartering is a great way to get goods or services you need without paying out of pocket. It allows you to stretch your budget and every smart business owner does this, but it’s no substitute for relationships.

There’s nothing wrong with bartering with those people you meet if you feel you can offer something they need. However, the greater gains in terms of accelerating your success come from longer-term relationships. It’s these relationships that become the cornerstone of your support network, helping you to navigate tough times and make it past challenges.

5 Tips for Growing Your Relationship Skills

1.   Connect for Success.

It’s hard to build relationships if you’re not connecting with other people. Choose one or two organizations to start. Attend meetings often enough that people know to expect to see you there.

2.   Show Up, Participate, and Get Involved.

Show up regularly and participate in activities when you do. Be ready to roll up your sleeves and get involved in the work required to run things.

3.   Seek to Serve, Not Be Served.

80% of people in any group are there to get something, not to give. Being part of that rare 20% seeking to serve rather than be served automatically sets you apart and makes people want to get to know you.

4.   Keep In Touch

They say the fortune is in the follow-up. You don’t build strong relationships if you aren’t willing to follow up after the meeting and deepen the initial connections you’ve formed. Take it slow in the beginning. Increase the amount of contact when you see how responsive they are to the first bits of outreach.

5.   Build a Relationship SOP.

We highly recommend spending some time to think through what you want to say and how you want to say it, how you plan to cultivate and build your relationships, and how you will handle the inevitable conflicts that come up in relationships. You can’t plan for every situation, but the more planning you do, the more prepared you’ll be.

Putting this down on paper in a Standard Operating Procedure document offers many advantages to you. It allows other people to communicate on your behalf when you can’t be there to do it, allowing you to send someone to network in your place. It also helps you to train people. A Communications, Relationship Building, and Conflict Resolution SOP is something we have created for our brands across the board, as well a customize them for our clients as well.

Not Sure How to Build a Relationship SOP?

Download our free sample Relationship SOP. It gives you a basic idea of what we included in ours so you can adapt it to fit your needs.

Want Help Creating a Relationship SOP?

We’d love to help! Email [email protected] with a subject line of [RELATIONSHIP SOP] to request a free consultation.

Connect for Success

When I first started a business with my husband, back in November of 2011, we thought we knew what marketing involved. He’d worked in radio and, as a DJ, often participated in the company’s promotional strategy sessions.

I’d worked for a Fortune 500 company in their marketing division. I’d been directly involved in planning their grand opening events – 20 to 30 of them per month – working with suppliers, entertainers, advertisers, security, and store managers to create strategic plans that would make the most of the $5,000 – $10,000 budgets they allocated to each event.

Discovering the Power of Connections

I soon discovered that there is a massive difference marketing to a warm audience that knows your brand and comes pre-educated about the benefits of buying from you versus marketing to a cold audience that doesn’t know anything about you or what you do.

I also faced another massive obstacle: we operated on a $0 marketing budget. None of the strategies and tactics we learned from my days spent working in marketing fit the situation we faced.

Our skills in developing relationships came to my aid. We leveraged my husband’s radio experience and technological expertise to trade advertising services with a local radio station. We leveraged my artistic talents and writing skills to form connections with the local art club and started a local writing group.

Those connections got us free office space in exchange for acting as the art club’s receptionist. Building a connection to the only local bookstore in town got our writer’s group free meeting space and helped us get a book signing to promote in the paper. All these connections eventually started bringing business our way as artists, writers, and small business owners began getting to know us and what we could do for them.

Pursuing a Dream

In 2016, I launched a writing business and connected with The And I Thought Ladies while on a podcast about an idea I conceived for putting together a reality TV show for writers. They leveraged their connections in film and media to try and help me get that show off the ground. No one wanted to pick it up. Nobody in Hollywood knew my writing abilities or why they should invest in me.

One producer called the show idea “too esoteric” to be of interest to the general public, even though surveys show that 80% of people believe they have a book in them even if fewer than 3% will ever sit down to write and finish one. Shark Tank’s on its eleventh season despite fewer than 65% of people believing they have a business in them. The interest existed – we just needed to prove it.

The Ladies encouraged me not to quit on the dream. We began working together and I became the editor for their literary magazines. That connection provided me free advertising for my books and events while helping promote other authors, agents, publishers, and editors.

In 2018, The Ladies invited me to participate as a presenter in their Experienced Writer’s Retreat in Las Vegas. That next year, they invited me back but this time, Joylynn happened to be presenting at that same retreat. The connection we formed that day led to us joining forces to start up Path To Connections ™.

Turning a Dream into a Reality

I’m happy to say that I did get my Writing Reality TV show last August. We posted the 4 preliminary episodes on YouTube, where you can still find them today. Joylynn participated in making that a reality and the And I Thought Ladies nudged me into revising my vision to a stripped-down version that made the execution possible without the $2.5 million budget I’d originally thought I’d need. It came together on a $0 budget.

They say that success in life depends less on what you know and more on who knows you, and a measure of truth can be found in that. However, in my experience, the more important thing in determining success is who knows you and who knows what you can do. Serving others shows your value and helps to nurture the connections that drive success.

I can tell you for a fact that connections are the key to making any dream a reality. The more connections you form, and the stronger the connections are, the greater your chances of making your dream happen and the sooner you can make it a reality. It may not look exactly the way you envisioned by the time it does become a reality, but that’s not a bad thing. Your vision didn’t take into account all the variables around it.

5 Steps to Forming Connections That Last

There are five basic steps to forming connections that last. Put this recipe to work for you and you’ll watch as the impossible becomes possible.

1.   Show Up Strategically

 Showing up in places that don’t connect to what you do or want to be known for doing doesn’t help you. It’s kind of like taking a business presentation to a pool party. It’s not only likely to be a giant waste of your time and energy – it’s equally likely to be an annoyance and a waste of time for the people attending. So choose where you show up with care and be sure you’re strategic when you get there.

2.   Be Prepared to Serve Others

The root cause of most social anxiety? Thinking too much about what other people are going to think of us or worrying about offending them with what we say or do. That anxiety can be so bad that we end up creating the very problems we’re striving to avoid. It robs us of the ability to enjoy the event we’re attending.

The best way to relieve the social anxiety? Focus on serving the needs of others. Looking and listening for opportunities to serve others will put your mind to work doing something helpful and productive rather than something toxic and emotionally draining.

3.   Follow Up with Your Connections

When you meet someone you think you might be able to serve at an event, or did serve at an event, be sure to follow back up with them after the event is over. That’s how I ended up landing a copywriting gig and working with Vyond and ManyChat, helping them with their Facebook advertising needs.

Service plants the seeds of your connections, but following up cultivates those seeds. It allows them to grow and to eventually bear fruit.

4.   Be Strategic in Cultivating Your Relationships

The bigger your list grows, the harder it becomes to manage without assistance. Use relationship management software to support you in this area. Leverage it to keep track of important dates and milestones in their lives, as well as when you last connected to or contacted them, what the conversation covered, and any notes about your next steps with them.

5.   Connect Your Connections for Greater Success

Path To Connections ™ exists because the And I Thought Ladies took their time to connect me to Joylynn M. Ross, the CEO and Founder of Path To Publishing. Sometimes all you may have to offer someone in terms of service is help with a connection – but those connections are powerful things that can open doors and change lives. Don’t be afraid to offer to bring two people who can serve one another together.

If you know someone you think might be able to help us achieve our vision of bridging the gaps between small business owners and the government, corporate, bank, and educational institution programs, initiatives, and funding that’s meant to help them succeed, we’d love to connect. Contact us with a subject line of [CONNECT FOR SUCCESS] and we’ll be in touch.

Get More Help Connecting for Success

As part of our efforts to help you gain more traction when trying to connect with others, we’re offering our “5 Steps to Get Anyone to Lean In and Listen to You” course at no cost to you.

Course Outline:

Introduction: What the course will do for you, who the instructor is, and why she’s confident she can help.

Step 1. Know Your Audience: The value of asking the right questions to tap into the needs of your audience before moving forward.

Step 2. Show Up to Serve: How the attitude you adopt when you approach your audience impacts the outcome and sets the stage for success…or failure.

Step 3. Create Your Message: Creating a message tailored to your audience that’s based on everything you’ve learned about them.

Step 4. Connect With Your Audience: How to get connected to your audience so you are in position to deliver your message.

Step 5. Deliver Exceptional Value: Why you should always go above and beyond when delivering services to your intended audience.

Conclusion: The next steps to take.

Add a digital workbook filled with exercises to help you make the most of your instruction and a copy of the slide deck to help you remember what you’ve learned, all for just $7.

Sign Up for the Course