A case study of old-school relationship building
We need to get back to the tried-and-true, "old school" relationship tools that have always worked -- that have been in place for millennia. Let me tell a quick story about Mike Andrews.
Mike works with me at Verdiem and heads our customer teams, including sales and customer support. Mike has had a successful career, and he has an incredibly deep, active network.
Mike isn't particularly active with LinkedIn. He doesn't have a Facebook account. Mike builds and fosters his network the old-fashioned way. And his network is far wider, and far deeper, than any I've seen.
Mike takes the time to invest in relationships. He does things that fewer and fewer of us do anymore, and because he does this, and does it well, he's making himself memorable.
People like Mike. People remember Mike. Through his relationship-building strategies, Mike makes people want to be close to him and want to do business with him.
Mike's strategies aren't rocket science, but they work. Here are four key things he does particularly well:
- Phone calls. Mike makes a lot of phone calls. Oftentimes, he'll return an email with a call, even though it might take a little more of his time. The call itself is differentiated, and the conversation nearly always generates a new piece of valuable information, a new personal or professional opportunity, and at a minimum it is an opportunity for Mike to increase the emotional bond he has with the caller.
- Focus on them. Mike is very good at making people feel good. Quite often, when I hear him talking to someone he hasn't spoken with in awhile, I'll hear him say: "It's good to hear your voice!" Wouldn't that make you feel great to hear someone say that? It's a subtle but powerful way to show you care and to engender folks to you even more.
- Remember names. Mike makes a point of remembering names, and asking for someone's name when he first meets them. He does this for business contacts just as actively as he does at the barista at the corner coffee shop.
- Eye contact and focus. Mike looks you directly in the eye, maintains that personal connection throughout a conversation and stays focused. He doesn't look around and scan the room, as if looking for something more important. If even for those few seconds, he's treating his contact as if that person were the most important person in the world to him. That makes an impression, and it leaves an impression.
Mike does most of this naturally. But for the rest of us, we need to more intently focus on these things to make them a habit, and they will work just as well today as they have for hundreds of years.
We focus on efficiency and immediate ROI in our marketing and bring that same measurement to our relationship building. Email is faster than phone calls. Facebook is more efficient than building relationships one at a time.
But differentiation in our relationship-building is also vitally important. Doing things differently may take more time, but that extra investment can almost always be leveraged later to get the personal and/or professional results you want.