How to Form Business Relationships (and Succeed!)

Would you like to turn $5 into $326 million?

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield didn’t know anything about making ice cream. However, after taking a $5 icecream making course, Cohen and Greenfield started the company Ben & Jerry’s.

The 2 friend’s strong business partnership made it possible for the company to succeed. Eventually, the pair was able to sell the company to Unilever for $326 million!

Could you imagine how different things would’ve gone if the 2 partners had split up? Ben’s ice cream, just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Learning how to form business relationships is the key to growing your company. Whether it’s relationships with your partners, investors, or customers, the stronger the connections are, the easier it’ll be for you to thrive.

Read on to learn how to create business relationships the right way.

Determine What Relationships You Need

First on our list of business relationship tips is to determine exactly who you should be connecting with.

Here are a few business relationships you can’t afford to miss out on:

• Employees
• Customers
• Stakeholders
• Suppliers
• Competition

What are the business relationship benefits of connecting with your competition? By building a bridge with your competitor, you’ll be setting yourself up for longterm success. Who knows, maybe one day they’ll become a customer, or offer to buy you out!

Quality vs Quantity

Next on our list of business relationship building tips, let’s look at the concept of quality vs quantity. While you might think having the most relationships is the best way to thrive, the opposite is true.

Instead, you should focus on carefully building valuable relationships that hold power. Your entire business can benefit by embracing the concept of quality over quantity.

Customers and enterprises will be more attracted to a company that provides quality services and profits. Even if it means you have to limit the things you offer, quality wins over quantity every time.

Power of Authenticity

To learn how to create valuable business relationships, you first have to be authentic. Being authentic means your company is doing everything it can to be true to your core values.

Here are a few tips to help keep your business authentic:

• Stay honest
• Hire authentic employees
• Acknowledge weaknesses
• Be passionate

When you and your team are honest and passionate, you’ll quickly elevate yourself above your competition.

Invest Extra Time With Main Players

You should be willing to spend quality time with all of your business relationships. However, it’s also important that you notice your key players, like big investors.

Spend extra time with the clients, investors, and suppliers who are vital to your business. Something as easy as sending a special check-in email, or thank you gift, will go a long way towards maintaining those connections.

Build Trust With Partners

Business partners help influence the decisions that shape your business. Here are a few trust-building tips to help with business partner relationships:

• Demonstrate trust
• Provide mutual benefits
• Be transparent and direct
• Practice patience
• Be flexible
• Respect their time

Respecting your business partners’ time means you quickly return phone calls and emails. Whenever there’s a meeting, you’re always a few minutes early. Finally, if you’re on a conference call, end it at the designated end time.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Did you know Facebook is the 2nd most visited webpage in the entire world? Social media is the ultimate networking tool, connecting you to customers and other businesses. To use social media to your advantage, you have to maintain a strong online presence.

For instance, you should be making new posts every day, and quickly responding to comments and questions. To save time, companies like Introducing Me can help you build and maintain a public business file.

How to Form Business Relationships With Investors

Moving on, let’s look at how to form business relationships with your investors. First, it’s helpful to always have prompt and honest communication. Clearly explain where your company’s at as well as where you’re heading.

Next, provide frequent updates that will keep your investors engaged and informed. Finally, give investors a chance to feel involved. Instead of just expecting your investors to foot the bill, give them opportunities to share their expertise.

Grow With Referrals

Word of mouth advertising, or referrals, can be a gold mine for your business. If you’re a fairly new company, it can take a while for you to build up your referral pipeline. However, as long as you focus on creating quality interactions the referrals will come pouring in.

Here are a few tips to help with increase your word of mouth marketing:

• Wow customers
• Know what the people want
• Make the referral process easy
• Request referrals

Wowing a customer means you go above and beyond to help them with any given situation. Next, make sure you’re clear about what your customers want. Finally, make referrals easy for the customer by asking them if they know anyone who could benefit from your services or product.

Overcome Limiting Beliefs

If you don’t have rock-solid business relationships, it could be because you have a limiting belief. Somewhere in your brain, you’re telling yourself that you simply can’t build the relationships you need.

Here are a few limiting beliefs you might be struggling with:

• There’s no time
• It’s too hard
• Business connections are fake
• My personal life will suffer

While it’s true that building meaningful business relationships can be a lot of work, it can also be fun. As you practice making long-lasting connections, the process will get easier.

Thrive With Your Connections

Now you know how to form business relationships that can help your company thrive. What’s 1 tip from this article you could start using today?

Will you start reaching out to your existing customers to see how they’re doing? Or are you going to focus on ways your company can be more authentic as a whole?

Remember, the more you practice business-building relationships, the easier it gets! Start building the relationships your company needs today. For more ways to help your business grow, check out the rest of this site.