The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success, Third Edition

Chapter 7. BUILD RELATIONSHIPS ON ACTIONS

Relationships aren't built on your mind-set or the information you gather—necessary as those both must be. You build your relationships on your actions. You build them not on what you say but on what you do and how you do it.

Good relationships exist because people trust you and feel close to you. Your objective in building strong relationships, therefore, is to draw people closer to you and to trust you. To build trust, you must demonstrate your professionalism, integrity, caring, and knowledge over time. To show you care and in order to get close to people, you do inexpensive, unexpected, and thoughtful acts for other people based on the information they have shared with you.

By continually demonstrating your professionalism, integrity, caring, and knowledge, you can move to the top of the Relationship Pyramid, the point where people value a relationship with you. How much time? Again, the only honest answer is, "It depends." But certainly more than a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

Your professionalism is how you do what you do. It is the skill, competence, and character one would expect of people in your profession who are really good at what they do.

Your integrity is the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles, professional standards, or both. It is reflected in the persistent, consistent, predictable actions that say who you are over time. You show it by your willingness to take a stand and to be ...