Relationship Building

Building relationships is an important part of being a successful business owner that a lot of people overlook or don’t fully understand. Here is how and why you want to build these connections:

• Vendors
• Competitors
• Bloggers
• Freelancers
• Employees
• Partners

Vendors

Since it is the most obvious I’ll start with building vendor relationships. Getting to know the people behind the warehouse is extremely important. They can be so much more to your business than just where you source your products. You can work with them to learn more about your market, more about your competitors, and more about the direction you should be taking your business in.

A good way to start building this relationship is by helping them sell more. Doing that will get them to take notice of you and begin to think of you as someone they want to work more closely with. Apart from normal sales, you can contact them about anything they have excessive stock on (now is a good time of the year to do that) and tell them you’d like to run a special sale on that item (or line of items) to help them move it quickly. They may give you a special discount to run the sale.

If you do that well and help them move that product, you’ll have leverage and history that will allow you to ask for more discounts in the future and eventually possibly even a larger discount overall.

That is exactly how I started building relationships with my vendors. Today I don’t pay dropship fees; I get higher discounts than other sellers, and work directly with my vendors when it comes to ordering and business planning.

As a side note, it’s best to do all of your vendor contacting via the phone. You can send an email to let your contact know that you’ll be calling to discuss a strategy with them or that you have an idea you want to work with them on but when it comes to the actual talking / planning / connecting do it over the phone, it’s more personal and will help you build that bond more quickly and will likely make it stronger in the long run.

Competitors

I know the idea of building relationships with your competitors may seem foreign and even wrong when you first hear it, it certainly did to me, but it’s quite the opposite. It can be one of the best things you do for your position in the market place.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by this: My friend Dan owns a hot tub store. He noticed that he was selling a lot of a certain size tub but not many of the smaller size of the same model. There were only a handful of other stores selling that model and only one other that he considered to be competition. So he got on the phone and called his competitor. He introduced himself and said he noticed he was really only selling one size of the tub and was assuming that the competitor was selling more of the smaller size.

This turned out to be the case and so Dan suggested they stop competing. He took the smaller size off his site and his competitor took the larger size off his site. Whenever Dan got a question about the smaller size tub he responded with a link to competitor and his competitor did the same for Dan regarding the larger size.

The conversion for each of their pages went up when they started doing this. They were helping position each other and strengthening each other’s stores by cooperating.

Not all of your competitors will be open for doing something like this. But it really can’t hurt you to call them up and propose an idea as long as it is mutually beneficial. If they are not open to working with you be polite about it and thank them for their time – you don’t want to start a war – if they are fantastic, you’ve just made a positive step for your business and you’ll likely be able to get more out of that relationship as time goes by.

Competitors don’t have to be the enemy. Approached right they can be a huge asset to your business.

Bloggers

This is another group that can at first be difficult to approach. What I mean by bloggers is not “all bloggers everywhere”, but bloggers that are relevant to your market.

They are great to have as “friends” when you’re looking to do guest blog spots or just have your articles and other content picked up and reposted.

Getting in with a blogger is not as hard as many thing at first. Really the best thing to do is be active on their blog or blogs – by this I mean read their posts, make helpful and/or interesting comments, and repost some of their materials on your own blogs.

Then approach them with some high-quality, unique content written specifically for them and let them know you’re interested in being a guest blogger. You might want to have a few different content samples for them to look at. They may like your style but not want to post the content you have sent them, if this is the case write something different that is to their specifications (as long as it’s not going to take too much of your time).

Getting in with those who are content leaders in your market is a great way to get more exposure for your store – their audience is likely very large and different from yours – it’s also a good way to get high-quality links for your site. Traffic and SEO together is worthy of a bit of writing effort.

Freelancers

When you find a good one, let them know they are important to you. Building a relationship with people who do solid work for you is incredibly important. Just because they are a freelancer and not a regular employee does not mean you don’t have to pay attention to them and reward them.

I like to think about my good freelancers as employees. I send them bonuses, gifts at the holidays, and try to get to know a little bit about them personally. If you don’t, they could simply leave you anytime without thinking twice about it. That can sting if they are good and you have trouble finding someone else to fill their shoes.

Again, phone contact is key. Talking to someone is the most natural way to create that bond. Email is too impersonal. As I mentioned before, it’s perfectly fine to let someone know via email that you’re going to be calling, it may actually be helpful to the person you’re contacting. Give them a chance to prepare; especially if they are working for you in some capacity, giving them a heads up might be appreciated.

But when it comes to the actual connecting part of relationship building, real communication is going to best electronic conversation every time. Here is an example of how I might start with a freelancer.

I call them up and tell them I’m thrilled with the content they wrote for me and I’d like to have them do more. I order the same amount and let them know that if they can deliver as good as the first time I’ll throw in a bonus with the payment because what they are creating is of great benefit to my business.

The next time I call, I may ask about their particular interests to see if there is a way to work them into the work I’m having the person do. Taking an interest in them is a reward and trying to work into their work so that what they are getting paid for is more fun or interesting to them is an even greater reward. All this stuff goes toward building loyalty that will keep the person around longer and keep the work they do for you at peak quality.

Partners

Now I want to talk about partners a bit. There are a lot of different types of partners you can have for your eCom business. They could be people who have a share in your store, they could be affiliates, they could be your vendors, or anyone else who is part of or helps in your business.

I consider my employee Meghan (you may remember her from the customer service interview) to be more of a partner than an employee most of the time. The reason is because we strategize together. She is like my right hand and would be very difficult to replace. I make sure that I treat her with the respect and gratitude someone that important deserves.

And that’s what you want to make sure you do with your partners. No matter who they are.

If you have affiliates for your stores that are producing income for you, get to know them. Write them or, better yet, call them up and ask them what you can do to help them make even more sales. Let them know they are important to you, that the effort they are putting into selling your goods is important to you. It’s amazing what showing appreciation and a desire to help can do to bolster their efforts and make more money for the both of you.

If you have actual business partners, be sure they know they are being heard. There is little that is more frustrating in business than feeling ignored. Be sure to listen to their ideas and include them in business planning and decision-making. You don’t want to suddenly find yourself splitting your business because your partner is unhappy and has decided to strike out on their own or simply withdrawal financial support because you’re not giving them the respect they feel entitled to.

Appreciate and build relationships with your employees as well. I’m not saying you have to be buddies with them or go beyond a typical boos / employee relationship in any way, but showing them that you care will go a long way in terms of their performance and how long they continue working for you.

High employee turn-around is a time-consuming pain in the neck, so knowing your employees names, listening to any issues they have and doing your best to rectify them, giving bonuses for good work, and other things like that can make your life much easier and really doesn’t take a lot of effort.

Another thing to do, is look for partners. You never know who is going to be an aide to your business or how they might be. Go to seminars, trade shows, local auctions, anywhere you can meet other sellers and make some friends. Even if you never directly work with anyone your meet, just talking shop with others who do it can yield amazing ideas and strategies you wouldn’t come up with on your own. Having friends in “the business” is beneficial and a good release for many of us who don’t really have a lot of people to talk business with.

So to sum this all up – build relationships with anyone and everyone who contributes to your business. The more and stronger these relationships the more solid your business foundation and the more support you have at any given time.

No related posts.