It doesn’t matter whether you are building your home business online or offline if you are not building relationships with your prospects your business will eventually suffer in the end.

Remember the old axiom,

Well this is true but just a little misleading, because it only focuses on making contacts.

But if you want to be successful with your home or small business then you need to focus on more than just having a list of people in your phone or a contacts file on your computer.

In this post I will address why you should be focused on building relationships, especially if you are involved with direct sales or the network marketing industry.

Building Relationships

Do you want to grow your business into a 4, 5, 6 or even 7-figures a month empire?

Then you need to focus on building and maintaining relationships with your prospects and your current customers.

If you get this right you will always have enough prospects looking at what you have to offer and eventually these same prospects will convert into paying customers.

Building relationships with your prospects

In the short term your goal should be focused on building relationships in order to give your prospects time to get to know, like and trust you.

Let me ask you a question….have you ever went out on a date?

What do you think the chances are for a woman to say “YES” to a guy that ask her to marry him on their very first date?

SLIM to NONE, right?

As a matter of fact there’s a good chance she would be spooked and avoid ever going out with that guy again!

My point is building a strong relationship is not something that happens over night.

It takes time to build relationships with your prospects, the same way it takes time to fall in love and eventually marry someone you care about.

It’s a process.

And it starts with understanding exactly who is your idea prospect and identifying what problems or issues or needs they have.

You must take time to really get to know your prospect just like you would for someone you would date. Find out what they like or dislike…what are their favorite books, tv shows, movies, cars, restaurants, etc etc.

Once you know a prospect then work on getting them to like you by adding value to their lives.

You can add value by taking time to understand their problems, concerns, issues or needs and educating them or providing other things that will benefit them. Soon they will begin to appreciate you and actually look forward to hearing from you or seeing you.

You can get a prospect to trust you by helping them solve their problem(s). When you know your prospects problem(s) simply recommend your product or service as a solution, if applicable.

Here’s the bottom line. People need to know, like and trust your before they will buy from you or even want to partner with you (join your team).

…but once your prospects knows, likes and trust you then chances are they will BUY from you or JOIN your business opportunity if you are into network marketing.

So whats the #1 reason to build relationships? -> To turn your prospects into customers or business partners.

Maintaining relationships with your customers

After converting a prospect into a customer or business partner, maintaining that relationship is the area that business owners and marketers often neglect.

This is a big mistake!

Most of your business will come from repeat customers… not new customers.

Maintaining relationships with your customers is essential to the long term success of your business.

Have you ever heard the expression,

It really means, “Keep her happy or else suffer the consequences…lol!”

Remember my dating example above?

Well let’s take the scenario one step further. Now married, how does the guy (husband) stay happily married to his new wife?

He must continue to give her the attention to to keep her happy… otherwise he may risk losing her later on.

The same applies for us business owners with a customer base.  We must keep our current customer base happy because if we neglect them they will lose interest in us and maybe even find someone else to buy from.

I keep my customers happy by emailing them helpful prospecting tips or sharing the latest and greatest marketing strategies.

By continuing to engage with my loyal customers I retain them as customers and they continue to buy from me.

So whats the #1 reason to maintain relationships? -> To keep your customers or business partners.

Burning Bridges

Unfortunately, I see way too many network marketers burning bridges with their prospects instead of building relationships.

Burning bridges occurs when you place making the sale or earning a commission a priority over building a relationship with your prospect.

The first goal when meeting someone new should not be to pitch your service or your product to them.

But people do this ALL the time, especially network marketers.

Don’t believe me? Just look at how people pitch their business opportunity or products on Facebook or other on social media sites.

I can’t tell you the countless number of times I have accepted friend requests on Facebook from people I don’t know and 5 seconds after I accept their request I get a copy and paste message from them pitching me their business opportunity or product.

These marketers are actually burning bridges with potential business partners, team members, and customers!

And you could be burning bridges based on how you respond to their sales pitch!

For example I use to politely tell them my plate is full or I am happy with what I am currently doing…guess what…I would never hear from them again!

Not only did they burn a bridge by pitching me but I burned a bridge too because I could have reached out to them or responded in a different way.

So how do you handle the sales pitch so that your are not burning bridges but instead building relationships?

Try getting to know that other marketer by asking them questions. Start by trying to find some common ground…what other things do you both have in common? 

After you know more about them then you can slowly transition to questions regarding their business opportunity….ask them how long they have been with their company, how do they like their products or why did they get involved in network marketing.

Once you identify their problem (in this case…bad marketing strategy), offer some value (some helpful marketing tips or strategies that would reduce rejection) and recommend a solution (product or service you sell, if applicable)

It may not always work for everyone but keeping a line of communication open to build a relationship is much better than burning bridges don’t you think?

So are you Building Relationships or Burning Bridges with your prospects?

Remember you are in the relationship business and building relationships with your prospects are critical to your short and long term success.

If found this post helpful please share it with others that you believe may benefit from the information too!

To Your Success!

P.S. If you are tired of not getting results with your business click here to GET HELP NOW!

P.S.S. Click Here To Work With Me Personally and I will teach you the latest and greatest marketing strategies to help you build a faster more profitable business!

How are you building relationships or burning bridges? Please comment below