Grateful & Professional Relationships

Be Thankful for your Business Relationships

Other than our co-workers, our business and professional relationships are who we interact with most during any given work week and it’s those relationships that help fuel our successes in business. It’s nearing the end of the year and there’s no better time than now to evoke our gracious and thankful thoughts and actions. Of course, this shouldn’t be the only time of year you should be showing appreciation and gratitude but it’s an important one.  Here are a couple of thoughts to consider:

Nice People Finish First:

As we all know, it’s important to curate healthy, happy and productive relationships within your professional network. I think we could also agree that being helpful, kind and polite is the baseline for creating a good business relationship. “Recipients of kindness at work are 278% more likely to pay it back compared to those who didn’t receive kindness.” (Chancellor, APA PsycNet). We also talk alot about having a give-to-get mentality and if you haven’t adopted that practice, then now’s a good time. Being someone who's looking to give value to their relationships and build on that practice throughout their career will soon become someone who is rare and revered. That thought of kindness and value that you bring to your relationships certainly comes back to you in the long run.

Where Should Your Gratitude Go?:

What are the most important relationships in your career? Think about all of their connections that make your job more fulfilling, easier, more challenging, or even possible this year!  For me, there’s too many to count!  I’m surrounded by smart, kind and giving people and I’m grateful for their support and guidance.  Think about your team members, clients, partners, vendors, investors; anyone and everyone should be on your mind when it comes to reaching out and telling them how much you appreciate them. One thing to do is make a list of everyone who’s given you a reference or lead this year (you’ll probably be surprised at how many people are on that list) and reach out to them. For those who are particularly gracious, set a time to meet with them and ask them how you can return the favor.

How to Show Your Thankful:

Crafting your appreciation and reciprocating what your colleagues deserve is more important than just saying “Thank you!” and sending an email. You want to make each interaction or transaction worth something and most importantly, if you can, personalize it. This is sometimes called transactional value and that can look like swapping information, inviting them to a holiday party, or introducing them to a colleague. As we all know, value is subjective, but one can discern what brings the most value to certain relationships. I’m sure you’ve received a personalized thank you card or bottle of wine or something of the sort from a colleague in the past. It made you feel special, right? It doesn’t need to cost much, it really is the thought that counts. This practice takes time and we’re busy, but showing someone your appreciation can go a long way in building those meaningful relationships with your colleagues, clients and partners. So just do it!

           There’s obviously a lot more to building out an effective relationship development or business development plan, but this should get the wheels turning.  If you need help or want to learn more about how we can remove the chaos from your business development efforts and create a metric-driven business development plan then give us a shout. 

Keeping B2B relationships strong is one of the most important factors in a successful business development plan. Reflect on what you can do to nurture and strengthen your relationships and apply this to your networking and social plans. Having a close community of influential, successful and uplifting partners can only bring good fortune.

Partner with Dinkel Business Development, LLC Today

If you want to learn more about metric-driven business development planning, we’re here to help. Please call us at 443.226.0163 or reach us via email at john@dinkelbd.com to get started.

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