How to Build Business Relationships with Anyone

As an entrepreneur, your goal is going to be to build business relationships with a wide variety of different people. This is not always the easiest thing to do because people often will brush you off and not be interested in talking with you. I’m not going to give you a complete picture of how this is done (for that, I recommend some excellent books, such as How to Win Friends and Influence People), however, I will give you a few pointers on what it takes to make a connection with people.

Remember, They’re People Just Like You

First and foremost, no matter who it is that you need to meet with in order to further your business, be it the President of the United States or a street vendor in Phnom Penh, people are still people and they react in the same basic ways that people all over the world react. Human emotion is universal, even when peoples have been completed isolated from each other and this means that you can get people to trust you if you do things correctly.

So, the first lesson is, don’t be intimidated. Treat people with respect and dignity regardless of who they are and you will find it easy to build relationships with them. If you look down on some people and are intimidated by others however, you’ll never be a successful entrepreneur.

Find Common Points of Interest

One of the biggest problems you’ll have with getting in to see someone who is relatively important (and not just important to you and your new business) is that you need to find a way to connect with them. There are two basic ways to do this. First, impress the hell out of them. Show them that you have researched their business and know it at least as well as if not better than they do. Most successful business people are smart enough to stop and pay attention when someone shows up who can teach them something new.

The second way to do this generally works better with the average Joe on the street. It involves finding a common point of interest. So for example, you may find common interest by talking about the same football team and discussing a goal that got away. Or you may find that you can make common interest by talking about their spouse and showing that you understand the issues they have. The possibilities are endless, but the important thing is to find a point where you both have a common interest. This breaks the proverbial ice and allows you to talk business.

Talk about Them

Most people in the world, even if they won’t admit to it, like to talk about themselves. This does not mean that you simply say to a person, tell me about yourself and then remain silent the entire time. The art of getting someone to talk about themselves is a little more subtle than that. You want to encourage them to discuss things that are important to them and to ask probing questions which show that you are not just a blank stare for them to prattle off to but are in fact someone who actually pays attention to what they have to say.

So for example, if they mention that they are having production problems because their machines keep breaking down, ask questions about where the machines were made, who they use for servicing them. Or if they talk about their kids, ask them which ones wants to grow up to be a politician and which wants to be a ballerina. Again, it’s not just listening without absorbing. It’s listening and absorbing so that you can ask probing questions which get people to feel like they’ve really been able to tell you things.

Consider a Farley File

Named for James Farley, an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this is a file that you keep on pretty much everyone that you meet. You can even make notes in your smart phone or on a notebook that you keep with you. The idea is to be able to quickly look up details about the person you may have forgotten. In essence, it’s a method for the busy entrepreneur to keep all of his or her contacts up.

Remember that people like to feel as if you paid attention to what they had to say and this means that if you can meet someone six months later and say, by the way, how was little Sally’s ballet recital? Last time we talked you said she was about to have her big day, you will score massive points with that person. They’ll feel as if they were important enough for you to recall little details about them.

And the best part is, you don’t actually need to be able to recall these things off hand. Just keep a Farley file and consult it before a meeting several months later. The only catch is that you can’t use a Farley file for the chance meeting because it’s considered gauche to consult it in front of people (the idea is to act is you remembered the details without having to consult a file).

Bottom Line

Building relationships with people is all about confidence. Take a look at some TV shows which feature con men, like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop or White Collar. The key that these people have is that they are confident and they can walk into any situation and act as if they belong there.

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