What do relationships have to do with marketing? A ton! A number
of events have occurred recently that help make my point.  First, my
business recently bought out one of our competitors. Second, my
partner Brett Curry and I recently landed a huge deal that will plug
us into over 40 major markets in tandem with a niche celebrity and
finally a 15 year relationship on the verge of getting major business
from my company lost it with one text message.

Relationship Marketing Lesson One:
How a great business, a super deal and numerous referrals can fall
into your lap!  As I mentioned one of my companies was able to
eliminate a competitor. You may be thinking we priced them out of the
market or cannibalized their customer base or offered them a tidy sum
they couldn’t refuse. If you did you would be wrong on all accounts.
You see, we were able to eliminate a competitor with respect,
conversation and joint venture marketing proposals over the course of
three years.

Are you competitive? You’d better be. However, too many take
competition personally and allow it to cloud sound business practices.
Don’t be afraid to get close to your competition, take them to lunch,
buy them a cup of coffee and send them a lead every now and then. If
you’re wise you’ll ask more questions than information you reveal.
Over time, you’ll build trust and eventually you’ll position yourself
to be the first in line when they’re ready to sell, ready to give up
or ready to partner in areas that make mutual sense.

Relationship Marketing Lesson Two
Reach out to the big dogs in your niche. You might be surprised how
thirsty they are.  Remember those gorgeous knock outs in high school
and college? Remember how in many cases they ended up marrying someone
way down the ladder on the beauty scale?(Find examples) It’s not
because they had bad cases of body odor, but they did emit a powerful
repellent: intimidation. Many of the so called beautiful people have
told me over the years they simply didn’t get asked out.  Then one day
when they least expected it, the nerd, the geek or the simply socially
awkward mustered the courage to go for the prize and to their eventual
surprise landed the trophy husband or trophy wife. How can you land
the big deal from the big kahuna?  Sometimes it’s as simple as asking
for it and other times its inserting yourself into the circles the big
dogs run and ask them how you can help. Big dogs are used to being
asked for advice, but rarely are asked, “How can I help you.” Remember
the big 40 market deal we landed? It was landed by running in the
right circles and asking, how I can help you. Of course the deal
didn’t come right away, but our persistent “how can we help you”
positioning narrowed the trust gap over time and one day viola!.  Go
for it!

Relationship Marketing Lesson Three
As fast as you built it, you can blow it. I’ve always been pretty
direct and the distance between a thought and the time it takes to
escape my mouth has achieved light speed upon occasion. Oh how many
times I would have loved to hit the DVR rewind on my mouth.  In our
tech savvy world emails and text messages fly around as fast as the
German Autobahn.  Be cautious of your business relationships when
engaging in verbal or tech assisted conversations.  Always read your
emails and texts back to yourself before hitting send. You will find
yourself revising more often than not.

Recently I tried to help an old business friend by giving them a deep
discount to help him advertise. We both agreed his advertising would
run when our company had the available space and naturally wouldn’t if
we didn’t have the space based on the discounted rate. This relationship was a
win-win and subsequently made me think of their company when I wanted
to change suppliers. They gave me a great rate and I was very happy
with the quality and turn time I was given. However, we recently
weren’t able to accept a job from them due to the amount of work we had ahead of them and the text message I received implied they were pretty upset.
My attempts to reach out over the phone weren’t answered and since then their company has refused to bid on additional work. It simply didn’t make sense and to date haven’t understood why they would react so illogically.  It is even
more of a head scratcher when I know they needed the work and we were
poised to begin sending them regular orders.  At this point the
relationship didn’t go as deep as I thought and I’ve decided
to abandon further attempts to console what seems to be
inconsolable. I will emphasize again, don’t allow emotions to get in
the way of good business decisions.

In summary, remember these three relationship marketing lessons and
watch your bottom line turn into a smile!