Making Every Conversation Count: Building Relationships in Business
Think back to the last time a coffee chat turned into a game-changing opportunity for your life or business. What if you could make every conversation count like that?
The key to unlocking sustained growth for a company lies in building a business network of genuine, meaningful relationships. It’s not just about collecting contacts but nurturing connections that matter with people who care about and are invested in your success. As highlighted in Entrepreneur's article on building relationships in business, the power of human connections is transformative in business. Similarly, Forbes emphasizes the art of networking as a crucial element for business success.
At Marion Street Capital, we’ve seen firsthand how strong partnerships can drive results. For example, our great relationship with our partner, Chris Calvert, helped boost our growth in recent months through referrals. Similarly, our collaboration with Ben Williams, a seasoned product expert and former CEO, has opened doors in the deep-tech sector. Our advisor, Sabrine Waismann, provides us with great perspectives on the European markets, shares with us relevant industry updates, and helps us facilitate conversations between investors and our clients. These connections underscore the value of strategic, authentic relationships.
Building a Business Network: Setting Up for Success
Before diving into the networking and relationship-nurturing aspects, preparing for a strong networking strategy is critical. Here’s how to equip yourself and your team:
Implement a CRM Tool: Use systems like HubSpot to track connections, tasks, follow-ups, and relationship progress. We find it useful to track our strategic relationships on a CRM and track new leads coming from those relationships.
Provide Soft Skills Training: Enhance communication, active listening, and empathy skills to strengthen interactions. It’s normal to have different personalities in your team, and not every professional thinks about honing these skills. However, preparing your team to build strong connections and relationships with partners and prospective clients is key to growing a business. You don’t need to leave networking only to your salespeople!
Expand Social Media Reach: Go beyond LinkedIn to explore platforms where your target audience engages. For example, MSC has been exploring YouTube. Our research shows that several business owners find themselves on YouTube learning new skills and hearing perspectives from professionals who have walked in their shoes. Entrepreneur discusses the importance of engagement on social media for building relationships in business, and how different social media platforms can be successful growth catalysts depending on the product or service you sell.
Set Apart Time in Your Calendar: Professionals and business owners are often so busy with meetings and prioritizing immediate tasks for their companies, that they tend to push the aspects of their work that don’t deliver immediate value, such as networking, to the side. To remain disciplined about building relationships, we recommend setting up at least two hours per week in your calendar to send emails to every potential partner and meaningful relationship that you add to your CRM.
Schedule virtual meetings, lunches, dinners, or coffee chats with your partners for weeks to come. This way, you will ensure you nurture those relationships. We like to invite our closest friends to events hosted by BCA (Business Clubs of America) Philadelphia because this organization cares about exclusively bringing executives who value genuine relationships over competition.
Staying Consistent and Adding Value When Building a Business Network
Consistency transforms brief encounters into lasting partnerships. Here are some practical tips for building these partnerships and adding value to the people with whom you connect:
Regular Follow-Ups: Schedule check-ins using CRM reminders to ensure connections stay active.
Offer Value First: Share insights, resources, or introductions that align with the other person’s goals. As Forbes suggests, providing value upfront fosters trust and reciprocity. To build trust, each partner needs to be willing to provide value “in exchange for nothing” at first. Once there is a base level of trust, discuss strategic partnerships with those professionals who also provide value to you, expecting nothing in return.
Stay Engaged Without Immediate Offers: When you find yourself unable to provide immediate value, such as introductions to others in your network, don’t be discouraged—these feelings of inadequacy happen often but can result in losing touch with great people. When you can’t provide immediate value, share relevant articles, ask for input on innovative ideas you want to implement for your company, or simply check in to maintain the relationship. Regular engagement is essential for long-term business relationships and growth, as discussed in Align's blog on strategic networking.
Building Relationships in Business: The Bigger Picture
Building a business network isn’t about quick wins—it’s about creating a community that fosters long-term success. By preparing your team, staying consistent, and prioritizing genuine interactions, you can transform every conversation into an opportunity for growth.
Marion Street Capital developed a disciplined approach to building strong, genuine relationships with companies and professionals in our network. This enables us to deliver the highest value to our FinOps clients seeking capital and to our RevOps clients seeking sophisticated strategies to increase top-of-funnel engagement and improve sales conversion rates.
Contact Marion Street Capital to discuss how our FinOps and RevOps expertise can and accelerate your growth.