Hey there – it's Ian here again.

In my last email I railed against the practice of equating marketing and relationship building with “schmoozing” and highlighted that the best way of building relationships with clients can be to overdeliver on your projects with them.

But that doesn't mean you should restrict your relationships with clients to just business.

It just means you should see relationship building as an intrinsic part of delivery, not something unrelated you swoop in and do later.

And often it's the little side conversations or the informal chats over coffee where the client opens up and shares information that may turn into opportunities in other areas for you.

As he often does, David Maister sums it up well. In his video on “The Rules of Relationships” he says “The key to great communication is talking when there's nothing to talk about. If you only talk when the kids have been arrested, you will deal with the issues, but you won't build the relationship”.

You can watch the video here by the way:

Rules of Relationships

Every interaction you have with your client is a chance to build your relationship – or not.

Focus first on delivering or overdelivering on your engagement. But do also take the time to talk about bigger, wider issues. Or just to build your relationship on a human level too.