The Art of Marketing: Relationships and Metrics
In the past, we stumbled into intimacy because we were all in the same office. Now we need to build relationships virtually as individuals. This approach should be taught to team members. We should also know who are the 25 people needed to accomplish our jobs.
People rules have changed. Now we have phone or online meetings with people we don't even know. Teams used to be silos (i.e., tribes). Now we have matrices or ad hoc projects. On top of that, meetings suck more than ever before. Previously, while waiting for the last person to arrive, we would have small talk. This contributes to building a feeling of "us" and not just "them."
We have increasingly less practice being tribal and quieting our reptilian brains. We are hyper-individualized and increasingly guarding against others. This is making all of us alone.
We haven't put new rules around technology, such as email, mobile phones, etc. Even if virtual, we should take five minutes before any meeting to do a professional and personal check-in to share whatever we want (e.g., I've been working on this project and just overcame this obstacle. My son just won an award and I was blown away!).
Despite our instincts, we need to empathize and even care about idiots in the workplace. This enables us to contend with and disarm them. The relationship mindset includes candor, accountability, intimacy and generosity.
CRMs don't track relational quality and management. The average relational quality of a sales force is 1 on a scale of -1 to 3. Every improvement of a half point makes a measurable difference in results.
People need at least three deep relationships, which are defined as people who won't let you fail. Having these relationships predicts the ability for us to have a broader network because it provides practice time.
