The art of professional friend building
The image above goes around on social media about 1x a quarter. Each time, it goes viral. It takes something mysterious and seemingly complex, and it makes it straightforward.
My favorite lines are #2 and #5. “It’s about people and it’s about solving problems.” and “Make everything else equal and then go make a lot of friends.”
I spend a good chunk of my time building relationships - what some from the outside might call ‘business development’ or ‘sales.’ And being honest, that’s not something I thought I'd be doing when I started my career.
But I spent essentially the first 6 years of my career interviewing business executives so we could publish quarterly surveys about various industry trends. I learned how to map out an industry and figure out who the competitors were. I built lists and lists of executives and then started working on building relationships with them. Some came easily, others took time, others required making a friend who could make an introduction, who could make an introduction.
Yet, at each step along the way, I learned that people really like to talk about themselves. The more obscure and atypical their job, the more they appreciate someone expressing genuine interest in what they do. And along the way, you learn things about them, their families, their interests, and their problems.
And if you’ve listened well, you naturally find ways to be helpful to others. For example, in a meeting 10 years ago, the person we were meeting with referenced an article he read over 20 years prior that was exceptionally impactful, but that he’d never been able to locate.
He gave enough details that I was able to return to the office, spend a couple of hours doing aggressive Googling, and was able to find a PDF of an out-of-print article from the mid-1980s. A great way to make an impression on a new business contact.
I didn’t think I'd end up in sales. The reality though is that everyone is in a sales role. The question is whether you are aware of it. Every role involves convincing someone to do something. If you want to advance, the more senior you become, the more selling you will do.
So, if that’s the reality of the world, you might as well get good at it. Three easy places to start:
Make a friend - ask people questions about their lives, listen to what they say, do nice things - send a thank you note, forward an interesting book or article along.
Understand their challenges - everyone, and I mean everyone, has problems. Ask questions, understand if the stated problem is the actual one. Work to unearth the real challenge.
Try and be helpful - Sometimes you can solve someone’s problem, sometimes you can’t. Regardless, people really appreciate the effort. If you meet enough people, often you meet someone who has an excellent answer to someone’s problem - so why not introduce the two people?
That’s it. Just keep doing it, week in and week out.