Work on Your Relationships ….[In Business that is!]

The past few weeks I have been using many of Google’s programs such as Google docs, knol, base, analytics and gmail. These are really excellent programs and what makes them even better is that fact that they are free. Free? Yes free.

How does Google make so much money then? This is exactly how Google makes so much money – they give stuff away… for free. They build such powerful relationships with their users that this generates such trust, respect and loyalty. [They make their money via adverts.] This is what makes Google such a powerful and successful company.

So let’s apply this lesson to our own businesses. Many small business owners spend lots of time trying to get the whole world to know about their business. I say don’t focus on the whole world, focus on a small group of people and give them what they want. Build powerful relationships with your people and they will eventually give back to you in return.

Earlier today I had a conversation with a friend who was telling me about his emailing list. I asked him: “How are you so successful with your email list?” He said that at first he was trying to get the whole world to join his list. Then he thought to himself: “Why not focus on the small group of people who actually enjoy being on my list?”

From then on things started to change. He started focusing on the small group… and I mean a small group of about thirty people who would actually respond to his emails with questions, advice or suggestions. Instead of focusing his efforts on all of the two hundred people he focused on the thirty and gave them exactly the information they were looking for. Word got around and with time his list grew. Then he started promoting products within that email list and the response was incredible.

Take care of your people, as you are building your business - focus on building your relationships with your people, You may not be in the position where you can give out stuff for free, but the idea of building a relationship is something that’s worth more then gold for you and your business.