Keep An Ear To The Ground
Listen to what they say. You can pick up clues about their hopes and fears and behave accordingly.
Equally, you might hear things about their organisation or industry from an unlikely source. Passing on news and pieces of information may help them avoid upsets and unwelcome surprises. They will appreciate the fact
that you gave good advice or warned them of impending changes and will be keen to help you in return.
Persistence Pays
To harness the power of personal connections you need to keep a few ‘P’ words in mind:
- Persistence pays, there’s no doubt about that.
- Relationship-building is like planting seeds – they take time to germinate.
- One of the most important factors in the process is preparation.
- You need to prepare the ground. It pays to know about your prospects.
- You have to persevere – sometimes for months, and, in some cases, years.
- Try to be unfailingly polite and patient.
- A positive mental attitude and outlook is infectious.
- Persuasive tactics get easier with practice.
- Make sure you do some planning – it helps you to know when and how to keep in contact.
- Don’t underestimate the value of praise when communicating with your business contacts.
- Most people respond positively to flattery.
Say It With Feeling
What’s important is the way you begin to build business relationships. In effect you’re starting a process of persuasion. It’s not easy, and often using words is just not enough. You have to be able to hook the other party into the idea that there is something in it for them. Once they accept this, you are more likely to get their attention.
Benefits are things that do something for people. One of the benefits of reading this book is helping you with your strategy for building brilliant business connections.
Making your case understandable, by explaining complex issues in a way that is easy to comprehend, is a benefit. Always play to your own personal strengths. If you are a cool professional type, make sure you communicate in a factual and efficient way. If you want to sound friendly, more informal and approachable, make your characteristics match the message you wish to convey.
Touching Emotions And Intellect
It is said that people act on emotion, and justify with logic. To be an effective persuader you should not only offer good reasons for something but also create emotional goodwill at the same time.
If you need to persuade powerfully, bring in stories to connect with people’s hearts as well as minds. If your objective is to motivate people to donate blood, you could tell a story about someone who needs blood for a serious operation. Successful fundraisers use emotive illustrations when persuading people to donate to charities and their appeals can bring in thousands of pounds in revenue.
Recommendations work wonders. If you have mutual connections, it is much easier to persuade when there are credible people to testify that your skills helped them in some way or other.
You should be able to come up with a number of people from your contacts whose name would add credibility and respect to yours. Do have the courtesy to check with them beforehand that you would like to mention their name to your new contact, as long as they have no objection. More often than not, there will be no problem. In fact they may even offer to contact them in advance to say you will be ringing.
Use Several Sources
If possible, don’t rely on only one source for recommendations. Using several different parties gives further weight to your case. You increase your chances that one or other of your sources will be a powerful influence over the person with whom you’re building up trust.
Don’t Waste Their Time
Ensuring that you are persuasive needs some preparation. Think about how you want to come across to your business contact. Ask yourself why anyone should want to listen to you.
List your reasons and then organise them:
- What are the most important things you are trying to say.
- How can you build rapport with one another?
- Can you arrange your thoughts into a logical sequence? You could start with something attention-grabbing and continue to maintain interest throughout the exchange. Perhaps you want to build up your case throughout the dialogue and end with some weighty fact that has masses of impact.
Whatever you want to do, prepare for your encounter with your business connection as if you were planning a presentation. Make your content understandable and attractive.