All right.
Welcome back to the soft skills portion of this of this lesson of this course.
Now we're going to be talking about relationship building which again is a very very big topic.
But let's try to break this down to something a little bit more palatable.
So there's kind of three things that I look at when I think about people that are kind of novices in
relationship building that they kind of mess up on that that people that really understand how to build
good relationships that they do want to end on a pretty frequent basis.
So.
So these are the three things the first of that is helping first and asking second and you know a lot
of the commonsense stuff with relationship building comes from people that interact with you.
Right.
So this concept is very very simple when you think about it in the context of your own life.
If you have a friend or even an acquaintance that comes to you and they're always asking you for something
and you don't hear from them for another six months and they come back and they ask for something again
you're probably going to get pretty annoyed with that that person and that same type of concept applies
here.
Always help first and this is things like you know you meet somebody that you think should meet another
another person in your network and providing an introduction right.
Like things like that simple simple things.
You know you find that one of your your contacts or relationships that you'd like to build that one
of their competitors just raise money or or something like that happen and you find an article that
may help them send that along to them right like little things like that.
It takes a step of helping first and then it puts you in a better much better place that if you ever
need something from them you're in a much better warmer place to ask for it.
So try to do these little things help as much as you can whenever an opportunity comes up to help take
advantage of it because it's something that you need to do.
Don't always have it be business.
This comes back to kind of the groundwork piece of the of the of the course that we talked about a little
bit earlier which is why I think having like a pretty strong social influence and social presence is
pretty important.
So you can interact with people not necessarily only on business type of terms right.
If they're interested in a certain type of music that you're interested in.
Send them a tweet send them a link to it say you know oh my gosh I love that band too right.
Like things are things like that people kind of miss out on because they just don't.
It doesn't seem like part of the part of the role but the key to building strong relationships is having
an emotional connection with somebody.
Right.
So find these things that's not always business.
Don't be that guy that's always about business and start building real relationships with people.
Be top of mine.
So this is why I try to blog a lot.
I try to you know whenever I'm asked to do an interview I always do it.
Things like that where I can become more of an influence on the topic and I can be some become someone
who is you know constantly top of mind for my the people in my network.
Right.
So they kind of keep me in mind right when they meet somebody that is valuable when or that they think
that that would be a good relationship for me to have.
Just being top of mind opportunities come up serendipity becomes possible.
So so start being more top search creating content start being somebody that is is around the web in
somebody that is top of mind.
And once once you are top of mind the next important piece here is to utilize your travel so likely
you know in the role of business development you're going to probably travel a decent amount.
I typically travel about once once a month sometimes more.
The occasional conference meeting that sort of thing.
So whenever I travel you know I really put a lot of value on the social interactions and the things
that are kind of virtual interactions.
But there's still nothing more powerful than meeting people in person.
So every time I travel let's say I go to New York for a conference and all the people that I've connected
with on LinkedIn which you know is kind of this actually I guess that's not part of this list here but
I connect with people when you have a good relationship with them connect with them on LinkedIn.
That's pretty pretty basic thing.
But do that once you have an actual interaction with them.
But once I do that like like I said here back to travel once I connect with all these people on LinkedIn
that are you know Soffer relationships of mine every time I travel to New York for example I filter
that contact list my connection list on LinkedIn to everybody in New York that I'm connected with.
So whenever I go I reach out to those people and I say hey I'm here you know for a couple of days.
Great to meet up and I basically set back to back meetings you know and no agenda.
Right.
Like my goal here is not to you know start a relationship between our business or whatever it may be
right like that.
The goal is not to get something out of these meetings.
The goal is to build a better relationship with these people and actually put a face to social interactions
that are happening and virtual interactions that have been happening.
So whenever you travel make sure to utilize your travel as much as possible.
You're going there to make sure that you pack your days as much as possible because these are these
are you know very big opportunities that that happen every time you travel.
So make sure to do that.