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Nurturing Business Relationships: Interview with Tej Kohli

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Business relationship building is art, one you cannot really do without if you are interested in career building, building an effective team, managing your brand, and discovering new growth opportunities for your business.

Blogging is all about relation building too: In fact, it’s more about being social than about creating content, so mastering digital business relationship building is the key to blogging success.

Tej KohliI was lucky enough to catch up with one of the best-known global entrepreneurs Tej Kohli, Chairman of Kohli Ventures, and ask him a few questions about relationship building. I have also added my own tips on how to apply this advice to blogging and the digital world:

Why are good relationships important in business?

Without a good relationship between trading partners, the business will not prosper.

Just like a strong  marriage , integrity and expectations of the other party in business are key to a successful and long lasting relationship.

How to develop business relationships? What are the basic principles?

In business, it is important to build up a relationship over time and not  jumping straight into the deep end.

Basic principles are to agree on each others expectations and a code of conduct and communication between the parties. Be clear on the financial terms between the parties from the very start, to avoid confusion later.

This is very important in the digital world too: Relationship building should not be measured in numbers and months. It’s a long-term process where, obviously, the rich gets richer. It’s hard to start but it’s well worth it!

How and why to develop global business relationships?

Any start up businesses always has the potential to grow globally whatever the product. If it is run with financial discipline, entrepreneurial flair and vision and a strong work ethic is how to make it globally.

Global growth can give the business a stronger back bone in terms of negotiation power.

Should the team be involved in developing off-company business relationships. If so, how?

For sure, as these relationships lead to creating new business contacts.

The best way of building a strong business is through referrals coming from satisfied customers and partnerships.

There’s has been a lot of debate about intra-company social media policies and I am always saying: If you want your employees or team members to be your company ambassadors, allow them to be on social media!

How can Internet technologies improve business relationships?

With dematrialisation, demorcitaisation and digitilisation we are now able to reach the masses with a click of a button.

Social media, business reputation profiling and marketing with a targeted approach to selected audiences, can all be done through the Internet – it saves time, money and manpower.

We live in the exciting times: We can build global business and international partnerships and events from home. Not leveraging those opportunities means missing out! I want to thank Mr Kohli for setting such a great role model for us all. I hope you are inspired!

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Why Hire the Blog When You Can Hire the the Brain Behind It?

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A Photograph or a Photographer?

This week, I sat with a client who sings with an elite choir. The quality of what they do is outstanding. They’re known for loving attention to every detail. When they sing Russian opera, they study the deep meaning of the words, not merely clear pronunciation. It comes through in every blissful sound they blend, share, and offer. Their musical director is exceptional. Their production staff is to die for. Their board is prestigious and powerful.

The music they make is heavenly.

But aside from an occasional sale to a friend in Japan and the many CDs sold go to friends and supporters. The choir is hardly known outside of their personal and professional network.

That’s why my client was meeting with me.

“I was thinking we should use the Internet. I thought maybe a piece of your blog or some others,” he said.

I said, “What do you want for the choir? What’s your goal?

He told me without hesitation. “We should have a grammy — more than one.”

“You could do that. You’ll reach my audience and they’ll love you. But I’d like to suggest something more and more lasting. Why not build an audience of your own?”

Hire the Brain Behind the Blog

Often first conversations with clients start with how to get their information on many influential blogs. That leads to discussions of buying, renting, or borrowing bloggers’ influence, determining the right audiences, and how much information on the Internet is misstated, misdirected, or outright ignored.

Boring products need to be “pushed” or “seeded” into the market.
Compelling valuable resources don’t.
One look at Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, or FriendFeed shows that we like to share great things with our friends. Susan Boyle’s YouTube video is an example of great content that didn’t need to be pushed or seeded. It felt good to share it. It made us feel part of something bigger than ourselves.

Using those thoughts and basic strategy — start with the reachable and move out with purpose and logic — we scoped out the existing and realistic possibilities. The plan my choir friend and I started looked something like this one.

Great word of mouth depends on three things:

  1. The product has to be outstanding — and the vision has to be clear.
  2. The way to share it has to easy, growing from the community’s natural connections.
  3. People need to feel proud that they were part of the process.

It sure seemed that my choir client had step 1 — an outstanding product and vision — covered. We moved on to the strategy for building out the community and letting them enjoy the process. We set out to make it easy, meaningful, and about the folks who would help. We were building a movement more than a strategy.

  • Start at Home.. Identify the offline network the choir already reaches. Determine best ways to leverage and expand it — keep the offline connections strong and growing. Keep the offline community engaged and participating in fun, meaningful ways.
  • Learn from, Listen to and Engage the Energy. Find and have dinner with the champions of the choir in the offline community who are already engaged in online social endeavors related to music, the choir, and possible connections for the choir.
  • Let the Leaders Lead. Join and enlist their armies and networks. Let those champions lead their own initiatives in the name of the choir.
  • Momentum Drives Building. Using what we know of our network and their skills, now is finally the time to put up build and release that YouTube video of the choir. They’ll already be part of the endeavor and their armies will know about it when it goes up. Sharing will be fun.
  • Celebrating and Sharing Are Natural. Our friends on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and the music sites we’re already on will be delighted to hear about it too.
  • Reporting Results. At the end, what we about on our blogs will have the power of our community as well as the single event.

And we’ll be well on our way to a network, a community that loves the choir, not one that was borrowed from a network of blogs.

You can hire the blog or you can hire the brain behind it.

It’s a matter of short-term or longer-term thinking.

Do you look at your blogger relationships as a chance to tap into new strategic ideas?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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Little Bloggers Grow . . . What I Learned When I Blew It

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We’re Only Ever So Big

relationships button

Yesterday I found myself far outside my comfort zone. It was culture shock — like what might happen if you returned to a hometown that has a code of conduct that you once knew well, but didn’t realize you’d left behind completely.

RESEARCH SHOWS that when a tall person is unexpectedly sent into a room of people who are significantly taller, that person unconsciously will revert to childish behaviors true to the last time he or she experienced being shorter than everyone. If the person is prepared, that doesn’t happen.

I wonder if that’s what happened? . . . except the difference in this meeting was about culture, vocabulary, and expectations.

Previous conversations had set up what we’d be discussing — an agenda for a meeting with their client. What I heard was working together to solve a problem. I’d done my homework — studied their website and their client’s website. I was ready to talk about how to approach unfolding the information within the context of the specific problem.

At the office, a fine group of nice people entered a glass sided conference room. All choose to sit on the opposite side of the conference table — no one had a laptop.

The first item of the meeting was my credibility. It might be restated as “Why should we listen to you?” Though the question is both appropriate, relevant, and valid, I’d come thinking we’d worked that out in previous conversation. So started an unexpected group dynamic, this wasn’t the work session I’d prepared for. I’d misread the previous conversations.

Was I the tall person in the room of even taller people? I don’t know. What I do know is that I couldn’t answer the simplest questions or organize the most elementary thought.

I was thrown completely.

When I got home I called to say, “Let me help you find the person to do this.” I shared a lovely conversation with the gracious woman who brought to that meeting. We debriefed for 5 minutes and talking about mutual respect.

Could I have done what they need? I’ve been successful at such things many forms or I’d never have gone there. But sometimes you have know when you’ve artfully blown it, and the best recovery is to admit that you know it.

I’m grateful for the lesson that reminded me to put these thoughts together.
Today I’m reminding myself

  • that every new situation is just that — a new situation with new people and cultures to get to know and understand.
  • that even though we speak the same language, two people can often be saying different things without realizing it. That’s why listen’s so important.
  • that hidden assumptions, especially those that come from past successes and my cultural biases, are the ones that I most to watch for when I imagine new situations.
  • that if I remember to overprepare with information and come with a “beginner’s mind” biased toward connecting and away from preconceived notions I’m always in a better place and focused on the other person.

Last night, someone reminded me of something that happened at BlogWorld Expo. Brian Solis, Jason Falls, Chris Brogan, and Lee Odden led a panel talking about bloggers and PR firms when a thoughtful person from a business asked how she could possibly afford 30 days to make relationships who only get 50 visitors a day.

I took a turn to answer, “Don’t look at us for one campaign. See the long view. Little bloggers grow.”

So do tall bloggers in Chicago.

What advice can you add to the list that I’ve started? I’m too close to the situation to have made a list that covers everything.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Something about Bloggers and a Chocolate Bar

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I've been thinking . . .

It’s not every day that i meet for dinner people that I’ve never met before. But it was a blogger’s blind date of sorts that brought Ann and me to a restuarant where we found CK, Sean, and Matt.

We were bloggers every one.

Ann, CK, Liz, Sean

. . .
What is it about bloggers that makes conversation so natural? . . . Have you noticed?

Have you seen what happens when we meet? . . . a hug — even the shy ones, the I’m not Kumbayah ones seem to have that part down.

A lack of small talk seems to be the hallmark of wuch a grand event.

Like a first date, after dinner, we went walking, and picking up a detail said in passing ealier, Sean pointed out an Internet Cocoa Bar. We inside for an after dinner conversation about the world, each other, and how telephones work.

At one point we remarked that the little shop would be perfect place to take a first date to extend as evening — just the right amount of intimate, casual, and romantic.

It was exactly what we had done.

Blogger relationships seem to come easy . . . like talking over real hot chocolate in a fabulous chocolate bar?

Sweet.

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