A Bird In The Hand is Worth 10,000 In The Bush or

The principles remain the same only the numbers change.

A paying client or customer is worth more than thousands of leads, prospects, promises, traffic and likes. In business, especially for professionals and small to medium sized businesses what counts is paying clients and customers.

Back in the 1990s and 2000s traffic was money. The internet was still new. Websites were new and a novelty. A small business, like the insurance businesses I had could have a website, be ranked high on Google and make money. Traffic got rank and rank got you clients and money. Now there are almost 1 billion websites so the magic is gone in traffic. Having traffic is no guarantee of business but it is often still the focus. Now we need to play where we can win.

Back in my day we had to walk through the snow for miles to sit around a kitchen table to do insurance business. (Actually, I lived in the south so no snow)

I have been in business since the 1970s. This was way before the internet or at least the internet as we know it today. It was still a time when we did business very personally. I am not saying it is back to the Stone Age but electronic contact for us was by phone and we had to pay for long distance calls. We did, however have to meet people face to face.

Today we can search and find thousands of jobs and clients but can we get any?

In looking for a job or business, I can go online and generate 10,000 requests to go all over or set up a Facebook group as see if I could get tens of thousands of likes. Back in the seventies it meant doing research and finding some businesses to contact usually with a personal letter and hoping for a positive response.

The most I ever sent out was about 50 letters and that was probably 10 times what most of my friends did. You know what happened? We all got jobs and good ones. We could not go and scan the country or the planet looking. We dealt with what was in front of us. Our employers did as well.

This is not back to the future.

I am not proposing we go back to this other time at all. Our technology is phenomenal. I have always been a big Sci-Fi fan so bring on the technology. The issue is that being hypnotized by the technology when it comes to business relationships today can mean a misplaced focus. Today as always what counts is doing business and doing business means an exchange of money.

Underlying much of social media is meeting people that will buy or we can do business with. What happens a lot is that there is little social in social media. If you went to a social event and everyone is talking, pitching and persuading is that social? It appears as a great deal of noise where the approach is to speak over the noise. We have reached a point where the noise is so loud that louder is not heard at all. It makes us crazy.

What to do?

We want people to know about us, who we are, what we care about, what we do and want to do. Our brains work the same way as they have for hundreds of thousands of years. We can only handle so much, the rest is discarded. We prioritize and not always prioritize in the best ways. Our brains are very good at listening through noise.

I believe today as always we need to do our work and let our work speak for us. In this way we can enter these social media and other interactions as active listeners. Being an active listener is like bring food to a famine. Once people feel like they are being heard and acknowledged then they can look around as they are no longer starving. If your work is well done, has value and you are perceived as an authority in your field and market then let your work speak for you.

Make the connection so the lights can come on.

No amount of persuasion, squeeze pages, drip marketing or other "sales" techniques can truly compete with great value. They might win temporarily but bringing real value is core to relating. People actually really want to genuinely connect.

Imagine a world in which all electric cords and outlets were either all male or all female. There would be no electrical connections and no electricity flowing. The lights would not come on. In our brilliance we have male cords and female outlets so they can connect and electricity can flow. The same principle works on and offline. Make the connections, real connections so the lights can come on.

Human relating has basic constants that span across time and culture. Nothing can compete with real value.

More than ever the basics of human relationships matter. More than ever those that apply the basics of human relationships as their focus and has technology in its place as tools to use as needed, will succeed. Basic human relating has constants whereas technology changes faster than I can write this article.

Technology is wonderful. I love technology and use it as instruments to help build real human relationships. In business, I feel that is the future because I feel the more powerful the technology the more human we can be with it and business is a basic way humans relate so let's do some relating. When business is good most people are happier. Let’s talk. I am listening….

John K Arnold is a 30+ year insurance professional, LinkedIn Publisher and Sr. Featured author on Newswire and Small Business Trendsetters . I position professionals, business owners, executives and entrepreneurs as the authority in the field and marketplace. Learn more on LinkedIn Profile