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.
Howdy! This blog post couldn’t be written any better! Going through this post reminds me of my previous
roommate! He always kept talking about this.
I’ll send this information to him. Fairly certain he will
have a great read. Many thanks for sharing!