Yesterday, I watched Will Smith's new movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, which is a true story about Chris Gardner, a man down on his luck who takes over care of his son while pursuing a new career as a stockbroker. Throughout the movie, Will's character struggles to survive, living in and out of homelessness, but with perseverance and hard work, he is able to slowly turn his situation around.
Without giving away the movie, one lesson that stands out is how Chris Gardner turned his situation around. While interning at a brokerage firm, Chris needed to land some new accounts in order to survive in his very competitive job. While the movie portrayed the interns as just dialing for dollars, Chris, was able to start to build a relationship with an executive who took him to a football game. While at the game, he was able to get to know several of this executive's friends and colleagues. By building these relationships first, he was able to eventually land them as clients.
The lesson here is that you should get to know people first before you sell to them. You need to build trust and credibility with people before they are comfortable doing business with you. By doing business this way, you will be able build long term relationships with people, which will be important for business going forward. These are the types of clients and professionals that you need to have in your network.
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