How to build great relationships for your professional services business

To develop your professional services business, you must develop the strong relationships that will bring you in quality business over a period of time. Getting some key clients on board with what you do will help you to grow your business and develop. We can see this at all levels of business relationships from small business to international trade. But these relationships for your professional services business don’t happen overnight. They need to be nurtured. Here is our guide to how to build great relationships for your professional services business –

People work with people they like

This is the first step on the road. You should put yourself out there and make connections with others. The more you get to know people from networking events or through shared interest then the more chance they have to get to know you, like you and want to work with you. Being friendly and helpful without expecting anything in return is an effective way to become a more likeable provider.

Taking things further than simple networking will allow your prospective client to be comfortable with you and will consider your service the next time they are looking for help.

Being respected means a lot

Sure, people work with those they like. But they also need to know that you know what you are doing. Being respected professionally is vitally important for you to get those contracts that you want. The UK is striving to do trade deals at the moment with the EU and other countries with Brexit on the way. A large part of these negotiations are based on the respect we have around the world.

You should show that you understand your business inside out and can excel at a task requested by any potential customer. This is a wonderful way to build relationships for your professional service business now and in the future. It might start with a simple task but can quickly build into a long-term contract.

It takes time and effort to build these relationships 

The simple fact is that you won’t bump into a contact once and find that they give you a massive contract straight away. It takes time to build the kind of quality relationships that lead to the kind of deals that can transform your business. Don’t pressure people with sales pitches when you meet them – this is a sure-fire way to switch them off and damage your reputation.

Instead focus on what you can offer people in terms of support and advice. This might be free of charge advice or low value work to begin with but can soon build to a trusting relationship that will pay dividends for your professional service business.

Target who you want to speak to

With this in mind, you would be crazy to have a scattergun approach of trying to hit every potential target all the time. There are only so many hours in the day. Think about the kind of contacts that would make the biggest difference to your company and concentrate your time and effort on these people.

This means staying in touch. And it will mean also following and being active on their social media feeds, sending constructive emails and picking up the phone every now and again. Don’t see this as a sales call, just build that relationship with the right people.

Make all of this a way of life 

And this is the most important part of it all. Once you settle into this as a way that you always operate, you will find that it is easy and fun to grow your business in this way. It may not happen overnight, but as time goes by you will start to find that you get good at this. Finding new business becomes much easier to do. This is how to build great relationships for your professional services business and how to generate income from this activity.

The way that others view you can make a dramatic difference to how your business grows. You may have noticed that some people appear to be having loads of fun while building a better business. This is how you can do exactly the same thing. It doesn’t have to be you in your company that makes this happen. If you don’t have the time or skills to do this, then you probably have another representative that can build the kind of relationships that will help your professional services business to grow.