The Secret to Building Business Relationships on LinkedIn (Anywhere)
There is a very simple secret to business networking and building relationships – communication.
If you think about your relationship (past or present) with your significant other, that relationship came about via a continuance of communication. You may have had an initial affinity for them, but as you communicated your affinity grew, the more you learned the more you began to like them.
This is a very simple proven principle – the more you communicate, more affinity you will develop. One of the key reasons this happens is that as you communicate you increase each others understanding of the other and you find more things that you agree on – those agreements add to the affinity between you and the other person.
The secret of building business relationships on LinkedIn, or in any business networking environment is that that initial communication cannot be your sales pitch. Why, because everyone has a natural defense to being sold. By starting your communication with your sales pitch you immediately do just the opposite of what works as your sales pitch shuts down rather than increases the communication between you and the other person.
In a business networking environment you must focus your communication on the thing the other person is most interested in – themselves. Asking non prospecting questions about them or giving them information that is of value are the two key ways to expand communication and build a relationship.
Of course providing the other person value has the advantage of building up reciprocity that can be used latter when you need something and in getting business from that person.
You may be asking the question “Well how do I keep the communication going?” Simple, keep finding ways to ad value – search the web for a resource they might need, search your connections for someone that might be of value to them, send the a note with the question “How could I help you on LinkedIn?” There are many many options.
The secret to business networking (and life) is communication. Just make sure you don’t communicate subjects that tend to shut the other person down.
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