All relationships take time and time is money. You do not have enough time to build and maintain relationships with everyone, nor should you want to. Be very selective who you allow in your network. You only want those who provide exceptional service to their clients and bring value to you.
If you think about the general population, less than twenty percent of people deliver exceptional service on a consistent basis. Less than half of those are good referring partners or know how to reciprocate value back to you. This means only one out of ten (1 of out of 10) people you meet will qualify to be in your network of trusted referring partners. Your job is to be able to quickly identify who they are and then get that relationship going.
Doesn’t it make sense if you are going to invest the time to build and maintain a relationship it should be in one which lasts and provides value to you? We have all invested in the wrong people. Those relationships are distant memories now, but time wasted nonetheless. What if you had spent this time building relationships with the “right” people, in long lasting relationships? How much better off would you be now?
