How to Measure Your Relationship-Building Expertise

How good are you at building financially-rewarding professional relationships? Here’s a tool you can use to track your progress.

In my last post, I explained that… you should think of your professional relationships like a pyramid, with the most valuable 2 AMs at the top… then comes Portfolio relationships, the “go to” people with whom you share mutual respect… next are Investment relationships, impressive people but whose interests may not yet overlap strongly with yours… and then Situation relationships that include everyone else you’ve run across.

There are two ways to think about adopting an intense focus on cultivating strong relationships: in terms of your career, or in terms of your company. Yes, both individuals as well as organizations can focus in this manner. For purposes of this article, let’s focus on a single career… but I want you to keep in mind that the same principles apply to entire businesses.

In the course of a successful career, you will move through the four stages pictured above:

1. Start: Let’s be frank… at first, you have no 2 AM relationships, outside of your family and perhaps a few college friends. We are talking about business relationships, and that is where you will be lacking. Your challenge now is to grow your own expertise and become someone whom others can rely on. In other words, in the event of an emergency, you want to be the person others will call. At this stage, your relationship challenge is mainly to start to invest in a few key relationships.
2. Spark: Now it’s time to start recognizing a few key individuals with whom you can form especially tight bonds. You are there for them, and vice versa. Your main asset at this point is simply the recognition that you need to cultivate such relationships.
3. Sturdy: By this stage, you are already operating in a very different manner than most professionals. The bulk of your time is invested in fewer, more powerful relationships… rather than in a lot of somewhat superficial ones. But you still lack many dozens of 2 AM relationships.
4. Star: Think of a strong CEO, an adept company founder, or even a talented senior consultant. S/he is likely to have 50, 100 or even more relationships at the 2 AM level. This sort of person can affect real and lasting change. This is the person you want to be, and realizing this goal requires a relentless focus on deepening your relationships.

Bringing this approach to your business…

Relationships matter. In fact, relationships underlie all business success. It is this realization that separates people who mean well from people who do well. It also separates organizations that mean well from those that actually lead within their marketplaces.

There are many ways that a company can facilitate the growth of such strong and lasting relationships:

• By cultivating a culture that respects and rewards strong relationships
• By providing top-notch tools and training
• By hiring and promoting relationship-oriented professionals
• By creating metrics that actually value specific relationships

The fundamental principle of my Relationship Economics approach is that business relationships are any organization’s greatest off-balance sheet asset. They are quantifiable in value, and this value can and should be proactively managed.

The first step is to chart your progress through these four stages, and to set up a system so that your business does the same.

David Nour is the author of ten books including the bestselling Relationship Economics, which makes the case that relationships are the greatest off-balance sheet asset any organization can possess. He is a popular speaker, and also a trusted advisor to many leading companies.