Deep relationships are critical for business growth.
I was chatting with one of my mentors/friends earlier and he was emphasizing the importance of building deep relationships with the people you know. While the benefit of this is fairly common knowledge, it came on the heels of my bemoaning the fact that I need help on the sales side (mainly because I personally feel like I’m at the edge of my network).
👋🏻 Sidenote: If you feel like your team can handle 2-3x the amount of work, but you are both the CEO and Chief Sales Officer and you don’t feel like you can personally feed the pipeline, you are not alone.
Shortly after this discussion, I was listening to an episode of the Founders podcast (direct to website or listen on Spotify). David Senra went on a tangent for a moment and mentioned this:
(we talk a lot on this show about) the idea that the world is a classroom. The books that you’re reading. The knowledge and skills that you are acquiring. The relationships that you are building – you have no idea the opportunities they unlock in the future.
He is 100% right.
You never know how the activities of today will impact tomorrow, next month, or next year. You never know how relationships will grow until you start watering them on a regular basis. Some relationships just need watering once in a blue moon, while others should be tended to more frequently.
When’s the last time you went through your rolodex and reached out to key people you haven’t spoken to in more than 6 months?
As far as building new relationships, when was the last time you reached out to someone in your field to simply have breakfast and talk about business growth? People are a lot nicer (and willing to talk) than I give them credit for.
I’ll talk about the classroom side of that quote in a later post.
