Building business relationships
Operationalize relationship building
Cultivating business relationships is a core component of business development. Business development, the ongoing generation of potential opportunities that can lead to more sales, is necessary for business longevity. Finding the time to invest in building those relationships can be challenging when you operate a small business. With the weight of all of the business obligations pressing on you or your small team, how do you make time for the slow, consistent work of relationship building?
Accept that you cannot do everything. Some balls will drop. You cannot do all things, even in business. Some balls will drop. Some unimportant obligations will need to fall away to make time for what really matters.
Decide which obligations are less important and can be delayed or stopped altogether. The good news is that you get to decide what really matters for your business, and you get to make a choice that you will spend your time in those areas verses all of the other distractions vying for your time. See the 5-Minute Read on Setting Priorities.
Shift your work into defined buckets. Some responsibilities have a regular cadence. You manage payroll every week. If you’re highly organized, you set aside time for bookkeeping on a weekly basis. You submit bids and proposals. Undoubtedly the to-do list is lengthy, but most of the responsibilities are well-defined and can be bucketed into identified blocks of time. Time blocking will allow you to do the focused work for a set period of time by freeing up the time you would normally spend bouncing from one task to another without focused effort.
Block the time. If you find it difficult to work in time blocks for the other obligations that take up your day, at minimum block time daily for relationship building. Or, set aside a defined chunk of hours each week that are devoted to relationship building, even if it doesn’t occur daily. Make it a non-negotiable that this blocked time will be spent cultivating existing relationships and making new ones. How much time depends on the activities you typically engage in. A breakfast meet and greet may be a shorter time commitment than a workshop or conference.
Plan Ahead. Give yourself the benefit of planning ahead. Every week, block time on your calendar to plan your relationship building activities. This block of time should be non-negotiable. Nothing, save a true emergency, should interrupt it. Ideally, try to plan a month out. That gives you the benefit of sharing your commitments with others that may need to plan around them. It also gives you the opportunity to engage in prep work to make the most of the experience. Is it a golf outing? Do you need to purchase any new golf equipment or refresh your skills with a few rounds at the driving range beforehand? Will you be attending a conference and have received a list of attendees? If so, spend time researching who will attend and make a short list of people you would like to meet or reconnect with.
Focus on consistency over results. Keep the same amount of devoted time for at least a quarter. There will always be outlier weeks, but consistently devote the allotted time to creating those business value add connections.
Refine. Eventually you will have some data that will help you figure out where best to invest your relationship building time. You want the time to be spent around people that can create business generating opportunities for you and vice versa. The patterns and necessary adjustments you will need to make to maximize your time will reveal themselves over time. Make it a practice to re-evaluate your efforts at least bi-annually. What events yielded meaningful results—a follow-up conversation, another connection, a warm lead? What has consistently not worked over the past 6 months or year? Consider reducing or eliminating those activities and focusing on the ones that have prove more beneficial for your business.
Follow-up. Develop a regular cadence for following up with people you meet. Block the time for follow-up activities. Whether it is sending a “nice to meet you” email or sharing some information you promised to send along, do not wait more than 72 hours to take the necessary steps to keep the relationship building going. Don’t let the one follow-up be the only follow-up. Schedule time on your calendar to make an additional connection point. Invite someone for coffee. Ask them for a warm introduction. Create additional touchpoints that keep you top of mind.