Six Years in Business Part 3 – Building Relationships (or Kissing Frogs)

In this Valentine’s week, it seems pertinent to consider relationships in business. How can we find our princes without kissing too many frogs along the way?

 People are the heart of any business. People buy people and if someone is going to buy from us, they need to like and trust us (See Fogarty’s tips at: http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/8-tips-relationship-building-business).

Building relationships takes time and is a delicate process that needs a balance of empathy and tenacity on our part. On our journey over the last six years, we have experienced some fairy tale happy endings and some heartbreak.  Many of our disappointments have come from misreading the signs or being led along a path to nowhere. However, in keeping with our learning ethos and our fairy tale scenario, we have learned from these experiences. We have kissed lots of random frogs in multiple pools over the last six years: we now kiss fewer frogs in smaller pools through more targeted marketing.  We will only kiss a frog if the frog has expressed a clear desire to be kissed: our offering is now more targeted based on knowledge of client needs.   Liking and trusting each other then become easier and we now meet many more handsome princes!

May you find /enjoy your prince this weekend!

Dorothy

Northampton

13 February 2014