Business
Relationships That Last: 5 Steps to Transform Contacts into High-Performing
Relationships
Takeaways
You
will learn to:
•Achieve
your quotas and goals by identifying, measuring, and proactively advancing your
most important business relationships
•Internalize
a five step process for advancing each business relationship, transforming
your business Acquaintances into Professional Peers and ultimately, Respected
Advisors
•Launch
new business relationships with confidence and ease
•Understand
how your customers’ Relational GPS—their goals, passions, and struggles—will
help you create relationships that last
•Develop
an action plan that allows you to apply what you learned to your existing
client opportunities
Business
Relationships That Last: 5 Steps to Transform Contacts into High-Performing
Relationships
What it Means
What
is Relational Capital?
“Little
things make big things happen.” John Wooden
Relational
capital is the distinctive value created by people in the business relationship
or the little extras. This is the principle of worthy intent, which is the
inherent promise to keep the other person’s best interest at the core of your
business relationship.
Why it Matters
Success
is not a secret
‘My
business is built on relationships!’
The
CEO of most major corporations
Few
companies actually create specific strategies for its professionals to use to
develop and strengthen the relationships required to achieve its revenue and
profit objectives. This leaves a gap, a “relational gap,” in the execution of a
company’s well-planned strategy.
Action Plan
Many
companies develop a strategy to generate revenue and profit through a series of
carefully planned processes. Most often these processes include a company’s
vision, mission statement, strategic plan, budget, operational plan, and list
of objectives. Business leaders have performed quite well on the operations
side of their businesses through process improvement, re-engineering, and
detailed planning. While this exhibits mastery on the operations side of their
businesses, there is little more at this point that leaders can wring from
their operational efficiencies. Ultimately, the company must close the gap
between all of these operational efficiencies and the need to generate revenue.
Strategically planning to develop outstanding business relationship is the way
to bridge this relational gap in a highly competitive environment that is
already saturated with similar products and services.
Today’s
competitive climate requires a step change from the comfort zone of a show and
tell approach to the solutions-oriented approach, with its three relationally
centered goals. First, the relational approach truly focuses on understanding
and knowing the people you’re working with and putting their best interests at
the forefront so that they are comfortable collaborating around business issues
with you. Second, it requires tailoring your responses to the prospective
client’s real needs. Third, it leads the client facing professional and
potential client to create solutions together that uniquely address these
needs.
Your Starting Point
To
start to improve your most important business relationships, you first need to
identify them. Take a few minutes to think about the actual existing
relationship that make up your constituent profile. Place yourself in the
middle and imagine being surrounded by the groups of people you have
relationships with.
1.
Who
are your five most important business relationships that will help you achieve your
revenue and profit objectives?
2.
Now,
from your list of five business relationships describe how they can help.
3.
Reflect
on your objectives for the next 12 months and pair them with your five business
relationships.
These
five most important business relationships that you need to invest in to
achieve those objectives are referred to as your ”Fab 5.”
Essential qualities: credibility,
integrity, and authenticity
“Today
is your day; your mountain is waiting, so get on your way.” Dr. Seuss
Your
credibility, integrity, and authenticity constitute the essential foundation
upon which to build relational capital in the business world. These qualities
impact how you are perceived and valued, and their convergence results in the
relational attributes that attach to you in every business relationship.
Many
business people perceive these qualities to be very similar; in fact, some
routinely substitute one for the other during discussions. Looking closer,
however, we can see that there are important fine distinctions among the
definitions of each term. And there is a distinct order in how each one
manifests itself in a business relationship.
Credibility
Credibility
is the quality that makes others believe in you, your words, and your actions.
Many client-facing professionals make a huge mistake concerning credibility.
They ask a question or two and then launch right into how their solution can
solve the client’s problem. It is very difficult to fully understand a client’s
problem after a few questions. It is almost disrespectful on your part.
Remember,
your new client for business contact doesn’t care about your solutions yet. The
questions they have at this point are:
•Do
they like you?
•Can
I trust you?
•Will
you embarrass them?
•Will
you come through in the clutch?
Integrity
Integrity
is, quite simply, being trustworthy in our actions and character. It is doing
the right thing when no one is watching. It is saying what we are going to and
then doing it. Integrity is the quality of having honest and truthful
motivations for our actions.
Authenticity
Authenticity
is about being honest with ourselves and our clients regarding who we are and
what we know; it is the quality of being genuine.
Where does relational capital
belong?
Process Makes Perfect
“Electricity
is really just organized lightening.” George Carlin
The Comfort of a Routine
Client
facing professionals have routines that are important to our sense of being
ready to move through the stages of the day’s activities. Most of us don’t feel
ready to leave the house in the morning until we have completed such tasks as
showering and dressing appropriately, having breakfast, packing the kid’s
lunches, taking care of the pets, and so on. We feel a sense of accomplishment
by following through on the routine things we have to get done. It’s these
kinds of simple checkmarks that give us the sense of achievement, even
confidence, that we are ready for the next set of tasks and activities.
The Relational Ladder
Having
a similar sense of accomplishment in how we feel about our most important
business relationships can also be very powerful and motivating. With this in
mind here follows the five steps to transform contacts into high-performing
relationships:
1.
Establishing common ground: launch the relationship;
2.
Displaying integrity and trust: secure in the relationship;
3.
Using time purposefully: invest in the relationship;
4.
Offering help: share relational equity;
5.
Asking for help, realize returns on your investment
Identify Your 5 Most Important Relationships
and Related Goals
Enter
your five most important business relationships and the relevant objectives and
performance criteria that you achieve by advancing these relationships. Please
consider key existing or targeted future relationships in your industry and or
community that are closely tied your objectives and business networking.
Establishing Common Ground
Moving
from just meeting someone to a committed business relationship begins to happen
only when your client shares a goal, passion, or struggle; until that time,
your relationship is in an acquaintance dimension. An acquaintance is a person
you know but are not particularly close to. In business, just as in our
personal lives, we seldom share much about ourselves with people we consider to
be acquaintances.
Displaying Integrity and Trust
Professional Peer
The
professional peer dimension is the level where you should strive to place and
maintain the majority of your business relationships. At this level, do you
prefer here, with no sense subservience for hierarchy in the relationship.
Offering Help
“Significance
comes from helping others.” Lou Holtz
Respected Advisors
Once
you are clearly displayed integrity in a business relationship and earned a
person’s trust, the path is clear for you to be even more authentic, to feel
completely comfortable being you. Authenticity—in other words, simply being
yourself—goes hand-in-hand with advancing to the highest dimension of
relationships. Being authentic is essential if you are to emerge from being a
professional peer with a client to being perceived and treated as a respected
advisor.
Discovering Your RQ
Game Pages
Transfer
your “Fab 5” and why they are on your list to achieve your revenue and profit
objectives.
Relationship
#1
Why?
Relationship
#2
Why?
Relationship
#3
Why?
Relationship
#4
Why?
Relationship
#5
Why?
Creating and Sustaining Your Action Plan
“Plans
are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”
Peter Drucker
Actualizing Your Plan—A Continuous Process
Your action plan cycle
should demonstrate the perpetual nature of the steps involved. Each cycle of
the assessment, action planning, and measuring improvements is an opportunity
to renew your commitment to putting into practice the principle of worthy
intent and topics discussed with credibility, integrity, and authenticity.
Everything else flows from these; nothing happens without them.
Action Plan Template
Relational Capital
Lite