The Great Debate: Quality or Quantity?

For example, if you are selling investment banking or strategic consulting services, you need a high strength level for someone to buy your services. These are big-ticket items which require a high level of trust in their provider. Ideally, you have a small number of close relationships with senior executives who are in a position to buy these services. You may be tempted to try to meet everyone in your golf club, but that is both unrealistic and unproductive. Instead, develop a substantial relationship with the top thirty most relevant to you.

However, if you are a celebrity trying to sell movie tickets, your relationships can be much weaker but your number has to be much higher. Movie stars mainly make money by selling people the chance to watch a movie for $5-$10 per view. They try to have ties with as many fans as possible.

There is no one right solution overall; your needs will likely be different from one context to another. For example, the movie star will want to develop strong ties with producers and directors.

Because time is the constraining factor, seek out strategies that allow you to build stronger relationships or reach more people with the same amount of effort. The effective use of technology offers several such strategies:

Take private conversations public.
Rather than carrying on an email conversation with just one person about a topic of mutual interest, move it to a discussion forum or mailing list, where more people can participate and offer their input, as well as benefit from your knowledge and ideas. Or cc: a few other carefully selected people to include in the conversation.

Start a newsletter or blog, and make it personal.
Make it possible for hundreds, or even thousands, to keep up with what's going on in your life and business. Rather than making it an impersonal article or collection of articles, make it about your personal experience, even when talking about your business. This approach is what helped Chris Pirillo grow Lockergnome to nearly a million highly loyal readers.

Write more effective emails.
Once you learn how, it doesn't take much longer to write a good email than a bad one.

Master mail merge.
As we discussed last month, the effective use of mail merge, even in small quantities, can dramatically increase your ability to keep "high touch" with a large number of people.

Focus on quality venues.
For example, having an article published in a major periodical is going to serve you better than being in "Joe's E-zine." It may take a bit more time to pitch it, but no longer to write it.

Say less in more places.
If you have time to make, say, 10 good contributions a week to discussion forums, it's probably preferable to post one message each in 10 different networks than 10 in a single group. You're helping more people, instead of becoming a boor in one location.

Above all, respect that there is no one right approach, and that what works for you may not work well for someone else. Seek out venues where you will meet the kind of people who can support you -- and who you can support -- in achieving your professional goals, determine the strength of relationships you want with them, and gradually grow the number of people in your network at a pace that allows you to maintain the relationships you've already created.

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