Thoughts on Excellence Free E-Newsletter Series
Volume 15, Issue No. 8a
December 1, 2016
By Dan Coughlin
What is a valuable relationship?
A relationship is where two people know each other’s name and something about the other person.
A good relationship is where two people know each other’s name and something about each other, and care about each other. For example, I have a good relationship with my neighbors. We know each other’s name, we know something about each other’s kids, and we ask each other how those kids are doing.
A valuable professional relationship is where you know each other’s names, you know something about each other, you care about each other, and you provide each other with the Three I’s: information, insights, and introductions. Information are the things the other person could know that would be useful in his or her work. Insights are tips that you have learned through your experiences that can help the other person succeed. Introductions are when you introduce two people who can potentially add value to each other.
What is a business ecosystem?
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines an ecosystem as “everything that exists in a particular environment.” Everything a person needs to survive and thrive is in his or her ecosystem: air, food, water, protection, other people, etc.
A business ecosystem is all the relationships you need to survive: employer (which could be you), employees, customers, suppliers, prospects, connectors, etc. Your ecosystem consists of all the valuable relationships you have in it. The strength of your ecosystem depends on the quality of the people in it, and the quality of the relationships you have with those people.
Your Sales Come through Your Ecosystem
You don’t sell anything through a cold call or at networking event. There is one and only one goal for making a cold call or attending a networking event, and that is to begin a new relationship. All you want to accomplish is to get to know another person’s name and something about the other person. Hopefully you will be intriguing enough that the other person will get to know your name and something about you.
From there you can show interest in the other person. You can actually genuinely care about the other person.
From there you can build a valuable relationship with the person where the two of you will exchange information, insights, and introductions.
Then you will become part of each other’s ecosystem. You will learn what the other person has to offer in terms of products and services and why they are of value, and the other person will learn what you have to offer in terms of products and services and why they are of value.
When you have a need or know of someone who has a need for the other person’s products or services, you will begin to move the sales process forward for him or her. When the other person has a need or knows of someone who has a need for the products and services that you sell, the sales process will move forward for you.
Focus on Building Your Ecosystem of Valuable Relationships
Building an ecosystem takes time and effort. You have to be intentional about it. You will build many relationships that do not directly lead into sales for you. Keep building your ecosystem anyway. Keep building valuable relationships where you exchange information, insights, and introductions.
It’s fun to do that. It’s fun to meet new people and to add value to them in some way. This makes life more interesting, and you will learn along the way. This is how you build a healthy environment to work in. You just meet a person, learn his or her name, learn something about the person, and then casually exchange information, insights, and introductions. And then continue to do this with that person, and with other people.
You Just Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
Please remember this phrase: you never know who will open a door for you, and you never know how big the room will be. Please put that phrase somewhere so you can see it every day.
As you meet people don’t try to predict if they are going to buy a ton of products and services from you, or if they are going to introduce you to some great customer. Instead just focus on building a relationship, and then a good relationship, and then a valuable relationship. That’s it.
And here’s one more phrase to remember: never forget the great value of free. When you give your time and talent and attention to another person for free, you never know what might come back to you. You can give your information, insights, and introductions to other people for free. Free is an amazing thing. It might open up new valuable relationships for you, and you never know where they might lead you.
A Few Personal Stories from My Own Ecosystem
When I was starting my business in 1997, I was still teaching high school math. I had a student named Tim. I volunteered to organize an event for parents on leadership, and I had heard that Tim’s father was good at strategic planning so I invited him to speak. It turns out his dad was a regional vice-president of McDonald’s USA. He ended up not being able to speak, but we met for lunch. We developed a valuable relationship. He eventually guided me into ten years of consulting work at McDonald’s USA that stretched across the U.S. and involved more than 700 of their executives, managers, and franchisees.
In 2001 I met a woman at a meeting who was just starting out as an independent consultant. I offered to meet with her to offer some insights on how she could grow her business. Then we didn’t talk at all from 2003 – 2015. She remembered my name, and in 2015 introduced me to three people who became great clients of mine.
In 2011 I was traveling to give a speech when I became stuck in Chicago for six hours during a snowstorm and barely got to the speech in time. I met a woman after the speech, and we spoke briefly about her business. I sent her a variety of free articles over a period of six months. And then we began a relationship that evolved into my working with many of her employees and colleagues over the next five years.
Conclusion
Continually pour effort into strengthening and broadening your ecosystem of valuable relationships. Meet a person, learn his or her name, find out something about the person, and then provide the person with information, insights, and introductions. In all likelihood you will never sell that person anything, but you never know what doors that person might open for you or how big the room will be. A wonderful book on this topic is The Tipping Point: how little things can make a big difference by Malcolm Gladwell.
Republishing Articles
My newsletters, Thoughts on Excellence, have been republished in approximately 40 trade magazines, on-line publications, and internal publications for businesses, universities, and not-for-profit organizations over the past 20+ years. If you would like to republish all or part of my monthly articles, please send me an e-mail at dan@thecoughlincompany.com with the name of the article you want in the subject heading. I will send you the article in a word document.