The Three-Stage Plan: Step 3 – Relationship-Building
Here comes the difficult bit! How do you build deep, meaningful business relationships?There’s no easy answer to this, neither is there a quick fix. However, there are a few important points to bear in mind before going on to develop the best strategy to suit your own purposes.
A Two-Way Process
Any business relationship is a two-way process. The person with whom you are dealing will want to feel:
- he wants your input and ideas to help him
- he will be advised in advance of any snags or problems.
This may sound a bit of a tall order, but until you have convinced your new business contact that you are professional, reliable, discreet and honest, the relationship will not proceed far.
You need to develop some self-awareness, too. Self-awareness enables you to be genuine.
It may be impossible ever to know yourself completely, but if you are trying to build good relationships with other people, being aware of your own personal strengths, weaknesses, hang-ups and prejudices is helpful to the process. What this means is awareness of your attitudes and values. If you are aware of these, you will then know how to adapt your own traits so that the relationship-building is not inadvertently hindered by your own behaviour.
Good Intentions
Interacting between parties requires perception and sensitivity. Effective relationship-building is achieved by being alert in mind, emotion, body and spirit. Concentration levels need to be high.
You are starting a process of offering something to others in the hope of obtaining something in return. Confidence is a quality that springs from competence. People show confidence in different ways. Some are robust and self-assured. Others may be risk-takers and not daunted by challenging situations.
Keep an open mind. Every meeting with your business contacts will be unique and present different opportunities. If you are resourceful and adaptable, you won’t need to have ready answers. What you are aiming for is to appear trustworthy and to be able to trust others in return.
Watch Your Step
The relationship-building process is like dancing. Each stage needs to be taken willingly and in tandem with the other party, before moving on to the next one.
If you are trying to lead your prospective contact on to the floor to do the tango, make sure he’s not expecting to dance the waltz. Get your fancy footwork confused and you’ll end up in a tangled heap on the floor which will be embarrassing for both parties.
Sometimes a pause will be required in between, to assess progress, and regroup. The process needs to be balanced – each party should be open in negotiations, able to weigh up the pros and cons of the information exchanged before making a decision to take a further step.
No relationship will be perfect, neither will it be easy or quick to achieve. In fact, the old saying ‘more haste, less speed’ is very apt. As long as a positive balance is maintained, progress will be made. The dance can sometimes be quite complex, depending upon the size and nature of your contact’s business.
If the plan on your part is to move closer to an organisation where a major project is likely to be awarded, then the success or failure of the relationship you are attempting to build can be dramatically affected by a number of factors.
This could be other parties involved in the decision-making process, or competitors of yours who may also be lining up for favours.
As long as you remember that this process is inherently two-way, and that satisfaction is needed on both sides for it to continue, then you will be able to make progress towards a winning outcome.
In any complex process where there is a need to relate closely to someone, this can be done best if it is thought through carefully and approached in a planned and structured way. Effectively you are trying to play an influential part in the other side’s decision-making process.
Your objective is to assist them to make decisions – the ones that will have the result of giving you the desired outcome. The more you are prepared to ‘give’ the more likely you are to achieve your goal.