Building Relationships

My friend Ilya Miro invites people to events… whether it’s a skiing trip up to Lake Tahoe or an exclusive business mixer or his Black Belt test/demonstration. These types of invites show that he is thinking of you… and if you take him up on the offer, the time spent together invariably leads to strengthening the bond. It also presents a great opportunity to introduce them to other people you know.

CALL TO ACTION

When you’re going to an event where you know a few people, invite someone you want to build a better relationship with. At the event, spend time with them and introduce them to people you think they would get along with. For maximum effect, introduce them to a potential client, partner, employer or employee.

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Help them look as good as they are in front of others.

Most people don’t toot their own horn. Some because they don’t like to and some because they don’t know how. But they usually work hard, put a lot of energy into things and are emotionally committed to what they do. when you recognize this and toot their horn for them, they’ll appreciate it.

Please Note: I’m not talking about bullshitting people just to stoke their ego. I’m talking about really paying attention to how good people are and the work they are doing and recognizing it.

One of the best ways to do this is to recommend them to people who need them. Another way is to help them look good in front of their boss by show how successful a project is. Just pay attention to what it is they take pride in. When you seem something deserves a compliment or public recognition, offer it without hesitation of feeling corny. If it’s genuine, it will come across.

CALL TO ACTION:

• Look for opportunities to celebrate the successes around of people around you.
• Join LinkedIn.com and write honest letters of recommendations for people who have served you well.
• Find opportunities to help people look good in front of their bosses, employees, clients, spouses, kids, etc.

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This is another technique I learned from Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone. The idea is simple: Offer you talents and resources to people who need it… without asking for anything in return.  Sometimes helping someone move over a weekend can build a relationship that creates 10 or 20 referrals over a few years.

Think of it this way: Be a good friend and you’ll find more friends.

CALL TO ACTION:

List out your talents and resources that you could lend. Here are a few things that have worked for me in the past:

• Your contacts & relationships –  which two people could you connect, even if you got nothing out of it?

• Your raw time — is someone moving & needing some muscle power? If you like kids, baby-sitting for a friend.family-member so they could take their significant other out for a special night might be an option. Picking someone from the airport in a pinch.

• Your skilled time — If you’ve got special talents or skills, you might be able to do a world of good for someone by either offering your time for free or a limited amount of your time for free. For example, my personal skill-set includes graphic design, marketing planning, business management, public speaking and more. I have been able to cultivate strong relationships with many non-profit executives by offering my talents pro-bono. In exchange, these executives have been generous is ways that I initially hadn’t considered. I’ve been invited to events I normally wouldn’t have known about, gotten press tickets to conferences, been personally introduced to potential customers and more.

• Gum — carry extra gum. It’s a small thing but when you’re in a small group of people at an event and you ask everyone if they’d like some gum, it gives you an opportunity to give something right of the bat. (Hope you’re getting the theme: giving is good.)

• Information — Knowing things first can be a great tool. This is similar to the lesson about educating others, but this is about the informal conversations that happen. What types of info might be useful?
  • Buzz words — knowing what it is and being able to explain it in terms others can easily understand while at the watercooler or conference table will earn some nice social capital.
  • Competitive intelligence
  • What to buy … ie. Being able to help people answer questions like: “Should I buy ____ or ____?”
  • NOTE: One thing Keith Ferrazzi warns against in his book is gossip. Gossip is not social capital. Trying to pass gossip as information will lead others to loose trust in you. Just don’t do it.

Next Lesson: Help Them Look Good

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‘Thought-leader’ is a term used to describe people who share ideas and lead their industries with these ideas. They are often considered the leading experts in their fields.

YOU can be a thought-leader if you share valuable thoughts with others.  If you give people an insight that is useful, they will remember you and you’ll soon find yourself to be a trusted partner in their decision making.

There are 2 decisions for you to make:

1. What thoughts to share?
2. How should you share them?

What Thoughts To Share?

Ask yourself: What do people I want to build relationships with want to know more about?

If you know a lot about engineering and you think others don’t want to know about engineering, maybe you turn into something fun that people do want to know about… like “how __________ works.”

Or maybe pay attention to what the latest trends is in your industry, find out everything about it and teach everyone else the important points.

The important thing is that it needs to either entertain them or it needs to be valuable to them. Ideally you’ll do something that is both fun and valuable.

How should you share them?

There are many ways to share your thoughts and ideas in today’s world. Blogs are a great place to start. Once you’ve been blogging for a few months, you might consider using BrainBank, which is a system for publishing online training courses. This site is actually powered by BrainBank. You may also consider doing public speaking or writing a short book.

CALL TO ACTION:

• Decide if this tactic is one you’d like to do in 2009.
• If it is, list out 2-3 topics people on your list would like to know more about.
• Decide what the right medium for distributing your information is. And yes, you can have more than one. Here are some ideas:
  • Blogging via WordPress, Typepad or other blogging systems.
  • Ecourses via BrainBank
  • Email newsletters via ConstantContact
  • Webinars via GoToWebinar, Adobe Connect Pro or WebEx.
  • Public speaking through chambers, associations, events and other groups.
• Do it!

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Remember birthdays… because most people won’t. My friend Michael Dotterer makes at least 5 phone calls a day to wish his friends happy birthday. He does this, because whether we admit it or not, birthdays are special to people. When you remember someones’ birthday, you’ll usually get put into a special category of people. If you do this consistently, you form a special bond over a few years.

In order to wish people on their birthday, you need 2 things:

1. You need to know when their birthday is &
2. You need to remember it on the day of.

Let’s start with finding out the birthdays of people you know.

Step 1) Figuring Out Their Birthday

There are 6 ways I usually use to find out someones birthday:

• Ask Someone Who Knows — Do you know the office manager/wife/husband/sister/brother of your contact? Use email, SMS & phone calls to ask people the birthdays of other people. The officer manager may even have the birthday’s of a few different people you know.
• Just Ask Them — Just ask straight out: “Hey when is your birthday?” You can do it through email, SMS, on a phone call or in person. I like email. On the phone & in person, I like to ask them towards the end of a conversation. Don’t make it a big deal. It’s a simple question, looking for a simple answer. Sometimes, you will get people who will ask you “Why are you asking?” Just tell them that you want to wish them happy birthday when it comes around… or make a joke out of it if you feel like it… with something like “I’m just looking for another reason to stalk you next year.”
• Make it part of a form — If you have an agreement or form that most of your clients have to complete in order to do business with you, add Date of Birth as a field into that form. People will fill it out without thinking twice about it. You can put a small caption near it saying you want to send them a card. PS: Don’t ask for the year.
• Pay Attention — If you pay attention to people, you’ll sooner or later discover their birthday. Just today I discovered someone’s birthday because I went onto their blog. I often ask people what they did over the weekend and many times I find out it was their birthday or their spouses birthday.
• Use FaceBook – The cool thing about FaceBook.com is that you can share so many intimate things like photos, videos and more. The feature I love the most is that it asks people their date of birth right in the beginning and publishes the day & month by default. People fill it out because its part of a form. So sign up if you don’t have an account and invite people to Facebook. You get to share things with them… and you get their birthday.
• Use Plaxo – Plaxo.com (owned by Comcast) is a way to keep the information in your address book always up to date & accurate. Here’s how it works: Once you import your contacts into Plaxo, you can send people a request to update their contact info. Your contacts will get an email with asking for updated information. They’ll click on the link in the email and update their information. How does this help with finding out birthdays? There is a field to enter their birthday (with or without the specific year) and a lot of people fill this out. Best of all, Plaxo is free of charge for it’s basic service and their premium service is awesome.

Step 2) Remembering their birthday

The key with this tactic is to remember the birthday on the day of the birthday. A day late is just not good enough.

The easiest way I’ve found to consistently have impeccable memory is to add the birthdays into calendar system that will send you a reminder on your cell phone. Google Calendar makes this really easy. Outlook 2007, RememberTheMilk and other calendar systems will do a similar thing. The best thing about these calendar systems is that you set the events to be reoccurring annually, so once you set it, you don’t have to do any additional work. It will automatically send you reminders for years to come.

CALL TO ACTION

Pick 20 people from your list of people you want to build a better relationship with, find out their birthday and add them to your reminder system. Once you’ve got all 20, repeat with another 20.  Before you know it, you’ll have everyone’s birthday down and you’ll be calling people daily to wish people with a birthday song. =D

Useful Resources

• FaceBook
• Plaxo
• Google Calendar
• RememberTheMilk

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Send handwritten thank you cards to show people that you appreciate them. This is a time-tested method that sparks magic when it’s sincere & genuine. Rod Weckworth, who I mentioned in the previous lesson recommends sending out at least 5 thank you cards every day.

What should you say?

Here’s how I usually write a thank you card. It is a method I learned from an article titled How to Write a Thank-You Note by Leslie Harpold (who sadly passed away in 2006.)

Her method is simple:

1. Greet The Person
2. Express Your Gratitude
3. Discuss Impact
4. Mention the Past, Allude to the Future
5. Say Thank You Again
6. Sign Off With Grace

Here is an example thank you card you might write to a client/friend who has just referred you a client:

Hey Tiffany,

Thank you so much for sending Tania my way.

I met with her yesterday and it looks like I’ll be able to help her by (how the new client will benefit). We’ve got aggressive goals this year (or The economy is really tight right now) and this deal will have a big impact. And (name of new client) seems like an awesome person so she’ll be really fun to work with.

Anyway, it was good catching up at Dos Coyotes last month. How ’bout we try Cheesecake Factory next week?

Thanks again for the referral.

Yours truly,
~ mel

PS: I’m including a small token of my appreciation. Hope you like it.

CALL TO ACTION

• Make a list of 5 people you should thank.
• Write out thank you cards and mail them.
• Tip: A great tip I got from Rod Weckworth was to hand-write “Thank You!” on the outside of the envelope near the return address. It helps get the mail opened.
• Tip: I recently came across a very neat service called SendOutCards.com. You can login using your computer, pick a card design, type out your message and they will print out a physical card with your message in it and mail it to whoever you want to send it to. The cool part is that the message can be in a font that looks like it was handwritten. This can save a lot of time. It comes out to about a $1 a card so it’s pretty cost-effective as well.

Useful Resources

• How to Write a Thank-You Note by Leslie Harpold — ARTICLE

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Now that you’ve got a list of people you want to develop better relationships with, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to do it.

The best strategy for doing this was given to me by Rod Weckworth: “Give something that will cause them to recognize & remember you.”  Rod Weckworth is a man who helped grow Rex Moore Electrical Contractors & Engineers from a 3-man operation into a $100 million per year industry titan without doing traditional marketing. He used the power of relationships to retain employees, win new clients, get contractors to tell him about new projects as soon as they aware of them, etc.

The funny thing is that if you look at most companies, they try to do this with meaningless promotional items such as pens & mugs and they almost always fall short. The key is to give something that will be valuable to the person you’re trying to build a relationship with.

CALL TO ACTION

Your next action item is to make a list of what you & your company can give to your friends, family, employees, employers, clients, etc… that will cause them to recognize & remember you.

Below are some ideas that work and we’ll expand on each in the lessons that follow:

• Writing thank you cards
• Remember birthdays
• Educate people
• Inspire & motivate them
• Lend your talents & resources
• Connect people
• Help them look good
• Be interested
• Invite people to events

In your list, be sure to be specific. If you think lending your talents & resources might be a good idea for you, make you list out what your talents and resources are and which of them might be useful to others.

If you want to educate people, list out the topics you might educate people about and exactly you might do it, such as blogging, hosting webinars, public speaking, online courses, live classes, etc.

Being specific will force you to take inventory of the resources you have available to you and I’m sure it’s more than you realize. In the next lessons, we’re going to explore the ideas listed above and I’ll offer you specific tips & tricks to doing them easily.

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An important lesson I learned from Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone book is to make a list of people important to your current and future success. This helps you bring focus to building the right network of friends before you need them… so when the time comes that you do need them, they’ll be more than happy to help you.

CALL TO ACTION

If you completed the previous lesson, you’ve already got your contacts in a contact manager that allows you to easily tag people or add them into lists.

In this lesson, here’s what you’re going to do:

• Usually 20% of the people you know are having 80% of the impact on your life. You need to identify who these 20% are. Tag them with a label that makes sense, such as VIP. Why? Because you’ll be allocating resources and time accordingly.
• Identify people who can & will have an impact on your success in the next 1-to-3 years. This list may include names of bloggers who cover your industry, your boss, your bosses’ boss, your most profitable clients, leaders in your community, future employees/employers, etc. Being consciously aware of who can & probably will have an impact on your success will help you think of ways to improve their life & build a genuine friendship.

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Step 1: Pick a Contact Manager

One of the biggest hurdles people have in building and maintaining relationships is not having all your contacts in a simple contact manager that you can use to retrieve information on-demand. That’s exactly why we’re going to tackle this problem right up front.

Your contact manager needs to be able to do these basic things:

• Create a new contact in less than 3 clicks.
• Create a new note relating to a contact in less than 3 clicks.
• Find a contact quickly.
• Create a task relating to a contact and mark it done when it’s completed.
• Organize your contacts quickly by tagging people or putting them into lists.

Optionally, if you’re planning on using it for sales, you might also want it to be able to:

• Create a deal and record progress.
• Output a report on your sales pipeline.
• Find a way to link marketing activities to sales revenue.

PipelineDeals, HighRise, SalesForce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and a few other CRM systems will work just fine. Outlook also works but its not the best software to use as your contact manager. I personally prefer PipelineDeals because it’s simpler, cheaper and easier to use.

Step 2: Export existing contact data

Once you’ve picked a CRM system, you need to export data from where ever they may be and import them into your CRM system. Here are a few places you might find contact info:

• Accounting — If you use QuickBooks or another accounting software, your customer data probably has a wealth of information about people you know.
• Email — If you use Google Mail, look under the contacts section. It has a suggested contacts list that contains a list of people you have had email conversations with. If you use Outlook, there are a number of tools to extract email addresses from your email communication. Just search on google.com for “extract outlook contacts from email.”
• Cell phone records — Skydeck.com let’s you pull info from your cell phone company & helps you identify who you’re talking and sending SMS’s with. I’ve found it to be a great tool for identifying people I want to and need to keep in touch with.
• Social Networks — LinkedIn / Facebook / Twitter / MySpace all have great information about people you are connected with. Facebook is particular awesome because people often have their emails, cell phones and birthdays listed in there.

Step 3: Import the contacts into your contact manager

The final step is to import your contacts into your chosen contact manager. Below are links to the instructions on how you can import contacts for a few of the popular CRMs:

• PipelineDeals
• HighRise
• Salesforce.com
• Dynamics CRM

This lesson is critical. Please do not skip it. It will make all the next steps a lot easier.

Next Lesson: Who Do I Want A Strong Relationship With in 2009/2010?

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