Relationships Are Key. Don’t Simply Walk Away.
Each year we step across a line between December 31st and January 1st, a line that we imagine clears all the struggles, fears, and pain that occurred during the previous year. Here we are on the first business day of 2018, and it’s a perfect point in time to place this reminder.
Relationships are critical to your business.
I know that building a new business is demanding. Crafting marketing plans and driving your dreams into new markets, and launching new services and products are time-consuming. The stress attached to the unknown can be overwhelming to a founder until the market starts consuming what you’re offering. Then, the chaos of fulfilling orders begins.
Stress and chaos tend to be excuses for the reprioritization of relationships, and tough clients (and prospects) end up dropped. Or they walk away from the lack of attention.
Why do we do this?
I’m urging you to minimize that desire to jump from point to point, relationship to relationship, and opportunity to opportunity like a grasshopper. Make 2018 the year you establish a relationship plan. Define your customers, employees, suppliers, and partners that you want to attract. Research where they come from, their motivations, why they need your organization, their character, and where your relationship will take them and you.
Having a strategy for your relationships will allow the organization to make careful choices in the future, with intention, every day, even in the most chaotic of times. Most importantly, set the direction so that consistent decisions will be made with and without leadership in attendance. It becomes part of your culture.
Therefore, it requires significant research and thought, create the plan with the intention to support the organization’s overall vision and be a tool to evaluate which relationships require greater investment. Understand the potential. Plan a long-term game and avoid short-sighted decision making that tends to torch to anything that becomes slightly irritating.
The value of a great relationship will pay off for years to come, withstanding storms, and the occasional bad decision. Appreciate and build those relationships, ensuring everyone benefits from the strategy.
