Building Relationships: What Are They Worth To You?

[atowers]

As if it didn’t take me long enough to understand that building relationships is critical to the foundation of every business, just months ago I came to another realization:

Not all relationships you build will result in a sale.

What is the point of this and what the heck does it have to do with YOU?

Well, truth be-known for several months I have been expanding my network, building new relationships, making new friends…but my intentions haven’t been in the right place. Rather than focusing on the friendship benefit of these relationships, I focused on finding areas of peoples’ lives that would generate a need for my opportunity.

LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES.

People can see right through you directly to your intentions. If you’re all about making the sale, they can tell and will likely back off from you. When you genuinely care about building and maintaining a true friendship with them, you’ll have the opportunity to build rapport, establish trust, and show them you care about them.

Not everybody in your life was put there for you to do business with. Some are there for support, some to teach you, some for you to teach them.

The point is we never know exactly WHY our paths crossed and it’s not necessarily important to know why. What’s important is to enjoy the friendship.

Think about it this way: Say you had special connections and were able to get event tickets for free. How would you feel if people tried to make friends with you because they knew you could hook them up? You would feel used, worthless and unimportant. More importantly, how would you feel about your “friends” knowing all they cared about was getting free stuff from you? You’d likely either avoid them or straight up end the one-way false friendship.

What’s it worth to you? Building friendships that may very well last a lifetime and pay you in residual and invaluable laughs, love, support, care, faith, good advice, etc., or would you rather build one in hopes that it converts to a sale and walking on eggshells hoping they continue to buy?

What would you do?