How To Start Building Effective Business Relationships
An article from Trish Davies that focuses on building effective business relationships with colleagues, leads, prospects and customers.
Hi, Trish Davies here, founder of Build Your AU and today I will be looking at a very important aspect of your business. That is the significance of building effective business relationships with other business owners, your colleagues and your customers.
As a business owner life can sometimes make you feel that you are alone especially if you work online. Many home business owners are solopreneurs who have fantastic ideas but predominantly spend most of their time alone. This is why it is important to start building a network around to offer you support when you need it.
That support network can be created from other business owners, staff, colleagues and even your customers. However, this support network doesn’t just materialise from thin air and must be developed and nurtured.
The purpose today is to give you some ideas on how what you can do to start creating this network. That will include personal development skills that you must have and environments that you can leverage.
I am sure that you understand the importance of relationships within your life from you family, friends and acquaintances. In many respects having good relationships is an essential part of life, like food, water and shelter. Generally, if we feel happy, we look on life with a positive outlook due to being naturally social creatures.
This same principle can be applied to our working environment. Establishing great relationships in business leads to you becoming more productive. You will also enjoy what you do much more which I believe everyone should experience.
The average working life for individuals is 50 years. Make sure that part of your life is something you look back at and remember with pleasure. That’s why building effective business relationships helps you become more innovative, creative and spot opportunities.
What Makes A Great Business Relationship?
A relationship is a two-way street and there are characteristics that you and other people must have. I feel that the following characteristics are essential for the relationship to work and for both parties to get the most benefit. These apply if you are dealing with other business owns, colleagues and your customers.
I feel the most important thing that makes a great business relationship is having trust in each other. It really is the foundation that every business relationship sits upon. Having trust helps you communicate better with that person in both speaking and listening.
It helps to create a bond that becomes unbreakable if the communication is open and honest. You must create a reciprocal feeling that you have each other’s backs”. Whether the communication is through email, video conferencing, telephone or face to face you must be completely transparent. Any grey area results in doubt setting in and this is the start of the bond becoming fragile and breaking down.
Through your communications actions will take place which then makes you accountable. So, accountability is key for any relationship to survive and gain it works both ways. As a business owner you must lay out what you are going to do for your customers, suppliers and colleagues. Then back up what you say and deliver the result. They in turn must do the same so the trust is embedded.
Once you have trust and accountability established, I feel that breeds the mutual respect you have for each other. You will have your opinions and they will also so when you respect someone you listen to their opinion. It will hold value just as yours does which enables you to become open-minded in your decision making.
When Building Effective Business Relationships, You Must Develop And Pinpoint The Following
First you must develop your overall people skills. Mastering the art of communication is critical so you must develop an appropriate tone and language. This will differ from person to person so you must develop the ability to say the right thing at the right time. The same can be said for listening which is the most important thing to fully understand the needs of other people.
Time management skills are needed to enable you to make time within your schedule when needed. Also, you may be dealing with more than person at any given time so you must be on point to hit the ground running.
Always show gratitude to people around who have helped you. People like to feel appreciated for their efforts and especially if you are solopreneur as you may be using outsourcers. The ultimate gratitude you show is to your customers because they are the ones who are paying your wages. They are people and not credit card numbers or an entry into a sales ledger.
Always be positive when dealing with people because it breeds positivity within them as well. It becomes contagious but a word of warning. If you let the positivity slip, then negativity creeps in which then has a destructive nature.
Finally, I would like to mention the subject of establishing boundaries for everyone in question. You must always do the best you can for the people you work with but there must be a limit. These ground rules must be in place to avoid people expecting too much and taking advantage of you and your time.
Where You Can Go To Start Building Effective Business Relationships
Your business will include dealing with two different sectors. They are business to business (B2B) and business to consumer which is (B2C). Let’s look at the business to business sector first and with you looking for people to work for you.
I have mentioned that you will probably outsource some of the tasks for your business. Many business owners feel they must do everything but that creates the problem of being a jack of all trades and master of none!
Taking on too much can be detrimental to your business because you simply won’t have the time. There will be elements of your business that you are not proficient in but there will be people who are. Websites such as Fiverr.com and UpWork.com have thousands of very talented people who can work for you.
At this point you are the customer so you must be clear on your needs and they must understand them. The process is that you give the tasks to do, move on with the things you are good at and wait for their delivery. It is an effective and cost-efficient way to use your time.
If you are looking to connect with other business owners to sell your products and services, then LinkedIn is perfect. Here you will connect with businesspeople at varying levels from junior management right through to executive people.
It is also a great environment to form collaborations and masterminds. You can learn so much about business by simply mixing with like-minded people. Brainstorming new ideas and concepts can sometimes lead onto bigger and better things.
I feel that stronger business relationships are formed on places such as LinkedIn. I have around 600 contacts there and know around 80% personally.
Attracting Consumer Clients To Your Business
Your business may solely rely on the business to consumer (B2C) market so you must look at where they hang out. The first place to start is social media and create profiles on those platforms.
Create Facebook business pages and groups under your brand to attract people who are aligned with what you offer. They are great communication tools that you can leverage to start to create a tribe of followers. Provide value to them through the content that you create so they start to know, like and finally trust you.
You have other platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter to name a few. Look at your products and services and choose the appropriate ones to create profiles on. Then you have the video publishing channels such as YouTube and Vimeo to publish content.
Consumer clients are just as much business relationships along with the business to business sector. Whatever business relationship you are trying to establish then you must follow the tips and strategies that I have shared with you today.
Relationship building is one of the core elements to my Build Your AU mastermind. I will help you develop the skill sets needed to attract the right people to your business. To learn more about this process click here to register for a free video series.
Building effective business relationships in principle are now different to personal relationships. Communication along with developing a mutual respect with people creates the trust you need. Showing your personality and understanding other peoples is very important. When you put all these elements together you end up with the know, like and trust factor!
Helping you build your authenticity, authority and audience.
Trish Davies
Build Your AU
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