Appreciation Marketing – Communicate for Success

Communication is the backbone for success.  Bad communication will send you and your business straight to failure.  Good communication will provide a path to a positive life as well as a successful business.  Not only can a lack of communication put stress on a marriage between two individuals, a lack of communication, or bad communication, can damage a business relationship beyond resurrection.

Have you ever seen two people who just never speak with each other?  Maybe one or the other talks to the other one, but do they ever speak with each other?  Open, honest discussion is the key to successful relationships, whether it is a friendship, marriage, business partnership, or a networking relationship.  When people fail to interrelate in their communications, they will never understand what each other needs or can contribute.

In the past we have discussed that you need to listen to what your networking partners need before you attempt to fill their needs with what you want to sell to them.  It does not matter what we have to offer, if it is not what our clients or partners need, then we should recognize their need and the fact that we cannot help them.  At that point we should refer them to someone that we may know who can fill their need or to someone who may know the person who can fill that need.

Of course, if someone cannot openly and accurately tell you what they need, it is your duty as their networking partner to help them discover exactly what they may need to succeed.  Then communicate how you can help them, whether it is through what you offer or to whom you can refer them.  That honesty and openness is so difficult to achieve.  Maybe your partner just does not know what they need, maybe they have bad facts, and maybe they don’t have the resources to discover their needs.  Helping fill those gaps may help discover the real needs of a business.

We must do whatever we can to cause our partners to trust us with their thoughts and the facts that lead us to provide help to them.  We cannot deceive them in any manner; we cannot have them believe that we are in the relationship for what it may give to us.  We must give to our partners just to give, not to get something back.  When we provide a relationship of trust and honesty, we allow all the involved partners to help each other if that need to be helped is shared.

Can you share your needs with your partners?  Only you know the answer to that question.  Only through an open communications-based relationship can this sharing be accomplished to the extent that it can result in mutual benefit.  When you meet a new, and possible, networking partner, you should work to establish this type of relationship.  Start the relationship in an atmosphere of trust and honesty and work towards growing it into the type of relationship that you want, so that it fosters mutual advantages.  That is done through our communications.

Share your experiences here about your relationships and your communications with others, or email me those experiences at Jim@SOC4Now.com, or call me at 360-314-8691.  Honest and open communications can foster great relationships and partnerships.  Look back to those relationships that did not grow to benefit both partners well, and see if you can reestablish the communications to make each partner comfortable.  It might be worth an effort on your part.