You first response to the title of this post should really be, “yeah, right!” There’s no such thing as an honest and enduring business that ignores relationships. It doesn’t matter if those relationships are with customers, vendors, employees or critics.
The key to success with our ever-more-transparent business and personal lives is to build trust the same way we do with friends. (incidentally, the picture here is of my long-time trusted friend, Mr. T., in the gray shirt and me)
So, the new business strategy is not to target a particular segment and “sell” them your products or services, but to earn the trust of the folks you want to attract and make it easy for them to come to you. As I heard this past week at SoTeC, the idea is for you to be the bulls-eye, not the targeting arrow. Your audience are now using the arrows.
What Do You Think?
Do you think in our world of transparency, a result of the prevalence of social media, we can avoid building relationships to have long-lasting, successful businesses?
I think that in the age of global business there is no more important tool than communication but communication without trust is irrelevant. Building relationships and relying on one another is a long time strategy of locking arms and attacking what you believe in cohesively.
GolferNewb,
Very well put. Trust is the major component or key for business. Small businesses can easily build it and large companies always try to regain it. The large companies are having an especially difficult time with this now.
Where I believe we're heading is toward a globalized effort at a local level in building relationship. This is what I'd like to refer to as grassroots relationship development. Translation: trust will make or break you business. So, it matters what we're doing to gain it.
Trust is especially important for big business because we're all tired of hearing them talk about social responsibility, business ethics, and watching out for us, then witnessing the unscrupulous behavior we've seen from the banking, construction, insurance, and technology companies.
I'm curious though: how do you think big business can begin to rebuild trust with consumers?