We all know that communication is what helps us builds long-lasting and powerful relationships. Whether that is in business or our personal lives. But often our schedules get so crazy with admin, meetings, sales and marketing stuff that ‘soft’ things like keeping consistent comms with others slowly slip to the bottom of the pile.
This is strange given the importance that business leaders give on high quality and consistent communication. Read any leading book on sales, business or networking and I bet you would lose track at how many times communication is mentioned as a powerful tool for helping others and getting what you want.
So, because we LOVE to help you out. To keep you on track and motivated, in this article we give a few reminders as to why consistent communication is absolutely key to the success of your career, your business and even your mental wellbeing.
Maintain relationships
Ever got on really well with a friend, only for it all to fizzle out over time as communication becomes more difficult?
We have all had it with work or school friends who are your best mate when it is easy to stay in touch and you naturally see each other every day. But as soon as communicating becomes a little trickier they seem to disappear off the face of the Earth.
It isn’t actually that difficult to keep these relationships alive. Just a phone call here, a text message there, just to show you care and suddenly that relationship stays alive. Of course, you may not be as close as when you were desk-buddies…but keeping that baseline goes a long way.
In a business context consistently keeping in touch with clients, suppliers and colleagues mean that your relationship remains well-oiled and alive, this makes is much easier to reignite with a small spark when something needs to get done.
Add value
You will always see ‘relationship gurus’ preaching about how relationships should be give and take. This is the same in the business world. Bringing value to your connections through consistently communicating is an excellent way to continuously bring value to those you connect with.
Showing you understand your connections pain points and offering to help remedy them either through delivering relevant information or connecting them to someone that could goes a long way to building a strong relationship.
Powerful reminder
“Hello – yes I am still here!”
Keeping consistent communication isn’t (and shouldn’t) be as obvious as that. But it gives you a way to remind people you are there, what you do and how you can help them. People lead busy lives and however fantastically interesting you are, when it comes to crunch time it is likely people will forget they met you that one time at that conference and go with an immediately obvious solution.
The amount of times people in business miss huge opportunities, latter to find out that the person simply forgot that they were an option is insane. Make sure you are always on top of mind by emailing, calling, tweeting, grabbing a coffee…send a ruddy messenger pigeon if you have to…but of course always make sure you stay true to your principles of adding value.
Not only does keeping consistent communication mean that opportunities come your way, but it also means you hear about other opportunities of interest. Even in cases where the opportunities you hear about are not of relevance to you, it gives you perfect ammo to fire over to your other connections in order to…add more value!
In this article, we have discussed why it is important to keep consistent communication in business. Not only is this important as a way to maintain relationships that will benefit you in the long term, but it also puts you out into the market to catch opportunities as they come your way.
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