If you’ve ever attended sales training, you’ll know that one of the most fundamental things they teach you is the value of forming relationships and developing rapport.
However, this skill set can contribute to your professional life in more ways than just sales. Building relationships with your colleagues will also help you be a better leader, as you will see in most leadership and management training. Both are correct, but it doesn’t end there.
Building great relationships and rapport is essential in any capacity you play in life. I’m talking about any role. I dare you to put me to the test on this.
Why Strong Relationships Are Key to Sales Success
You must create and maintain solid and long-lasting relationships as a Salesperson. Why? For starters, how can you expect someone to buy from you if they don’t like you? Unless you sell a freaking Apple iPhone, people buy from people they trust. A salesperson also thrives and benefits drastically off of referrals. If you aren’t liked, you are getting the referrals.
Leaders need solid relationships with their employees in order to facilitate trust. I’ve written about this in my Qualities of a Strong Leader blog. “A strong leader has the ability to connect to their employees. If your employees don’t share your vision, they won’t help grow the company.” If you don’t have a good relationship with someone that works for you, they will not want to follow through both the good and bad times.
Build a Relationship That’s Strong Enough to Last
Spouses need to build a strong relationship with one another. One that is built on mutual trust and understanding because a strong relationship is necessary to weather the storms of life together. You cannot have that “til death do us part” type of love with a rocky relationship.
Parents need to build a strong relationship with their children, one that is based on understanding, love and respect. Your kids need to see you walking the walk, not just talking the talk.
They need to know that they can come to you for guidance and that, whether they like it or not, they will accept it, even if reluctantly.
To be clear, parenting is really difficult, so don’t imagine that having a close relationship with your child will make parenting easy. It won’t happen until the child is old enough to comprehend why you parented the way you did.
Coworkers need to build great relationships with each other. You typically spend more time with your coworkers than you do with your family. If you have crappy relationships in the workplace, you will struggle to find the comradery necessary to facilitate personal growth, skill development and you will not get help when needed.
Who wants to go out of their way for someone purely out of obligation? Not many people these days, that’s for sure.
Relationship Building Skills for the Win
I could go on and on here but the point is, you need to work on your relationship building skills no matter how you’re applying it in life.
You have to be able to empathize, sympathize and care enough about other people to do right by them. When you get to know people for the people they are, it makes it much easier to help and receive help. It makes it easier to build trust and rapport. It makes it easier to accomplish goals and tasks because you have people backing you and believing in you.
Salespeople are great at building relationships. And some, the really good ones, are great at maintaining those relationships.
They’re great at it because they know they can’t hit their quotas without. They know that they’ll get charged back if clients leave too soon due to lack of trust. Sales people always put the client on a pedestal and help falcate that relationship because it is a key part of their job.
Fill Your Corner With People That Care About You
So my question to you is, why doesn’t everyone want to have relationships that are built on a foundation of mutual respect and trust?
- Why wouldn’t you want to surround yourself with individuals who care about you enough to support you in any situation?
- Why wouldn’t you want people that are willing to pick you up when you fall or cheer you up on a bad day?
- Why wouldn’t you want employees that will go to battle with you because they believe in what you’re trying to build, accomplish or achieve?
I’m not one of those people who needs everyone to like her. However, I am one of those people that knows life is way easier when most people do.
Make this year one where you focus on your relationships both in and outside of your career. Focus on laying a foundation of trust, and respect and mutual understanding that will help facilitate your personal and professional growth while elevating others in their growth as well.
I think you can handle it.
Last modified: January 30, 2023
