It was a businessperson's worst nightmare. And a family's, too. Eleven years ago, my dad was going to lose his store due to a problem with the IRS that was not of his making. The situation looked hopeless. On the day that the government was going to shutter the place, my dad told Mr. Fluker, his landlord, about his difficulties, and Fluker stepped in to broker a deal that kept my dad in business.
Why did Fluker do it? Sure, he thought the store was a good asset to the building and he didn't want to lose a tenant. But mostly he did it because he liked my dad. Over the years, my dad had gone out of his way to be more than just a rent check every month. He had built a relationship with the building manager that proved as valuable as the rent.
In business, relationships matter. We all know that. But often we're so focused on the day-to-day grind that we don't think about the best way to build them. The more you speak with successful people, though, the more they credit their success to the ability to turn business acquaintances into trusted partners and friends. We spoke to some ace relationship builders to learn how they do it and how it has helped them.
Everyone knows that the ultimate goal of reaching out to build a relationship is to work together, but the road to getting there is through focusing on the other person. "You have to find out what they treasure," says Jerry Acuff, coauthor of The Relationship Edge in Business (Wiley, 2004). The key to doing that is being patient and being curious. "I have to invest the time in finding where success lies for the people I work with," says Amy Errett, CEO of Olivia, an upscale vacation provider. "How can I set up that success for them? If you listen to people, they're pretty well going to tell you what they need." Errett books a lot of entertainers to perform on cruise ships and at resorts. She has the sometimes unenviable task of determining what's going to make her singers and dancers happy. "It may be very important to them to have a certain kind of security, a certain kind of food in the holding room," she says. "It may seem silly, but it's absolutely essential."
"Every time I meet somebody, if I don't give them something educational that they can use, whether they buy me or not, then I haven't done my job." -John Palumbo of DVC Experiential Marketing
Finding what motivates people is important, but then you have to develop trust. The best way to do that is to continue to show in a "persistent, predictable, and consistent" way, as Acuff puts it, that you're someone worth having a relationship with. The method that often best lets people know that you're not solely self-interested is to give away good ideas before you've made a deal. "Every time I meet somebody, if I don't give them something educational that they can use, whether they buy me or not, then I haven't done my job," says John Palumbo, president of DVC Experiential Marketing, whose clients include Fujifilm and Gillette. He's always thinking about the people in his professional circle and then steering them to keen ideas and insights. "I'll see something and say, 'Oh, the people at Nokia would love that.' I listened to them when I met with them. A lot of people aren't even listening."
These gestures don't even have to be things that cost extra time or money. Andrew Whitman, managing partner of 2x Management, which invests in and operates consumer-products businesses, started writing summaries of the food-industry trade shows he attends for his business partners. Then one day, he was speaking with an executive headhunter who had missed a recent show, and Whitman offered her his notes. Since then, Whitman's show sampler has become valuable currency in cultivating business relationships. "There's no proprietary information in there, so I send it to anyone who asks. It's a nice way to stay in touch with people," he says. "I get notes back from 50% of the people who receive it. I get some interesting ideas back, and it generates some great discussion among peers about what's going on in the industry."
You constantly have to be thinking about how and where you can build and strengthen relationships. As for the where, that means working in coffee, lunch, dinner, or drinks with current or potential contacts on every travel opportunity. Or you can truly go the extra mile. When consultant Martin Pichinson sought to expand his business to Silicon Valley from his base in L.A., he jumped at every chance to strike connections with potential business partners in his new location. "If someone called me up and said, 'I may have a deal for you, when are you going to be here next?' I'd try to be there the next morning," says Pichinson, president of consulting firm Sherwood Partners Inc. "I'd take a 5:45 a.m. flight up and be at their offices at 8:15 to go to breakfast. You have to quickly cement any opportunity that arises, or your competition will." After 11 years of making connections, Pichinson moved his headquarters to Palo Alto and does much of his business there.
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