Friends

Noted sales author Jef­frey Git­o­mer stated the value of friends like this.  “All things being equal, peo­ple want to do busi­ness with their friends.”  “All things being not so equal, peo­ple STILL want to do busi­ness with their friends.”  “Con­nect­ing is all about your friend­li­ness, your abil­ity to engage, and your will­ing­ness to give value first.”  Note that the book that this was taken from, The Lit­tle Black Book of Con­nec­tions,  is not even about social media, yet it is directly applicable.

Friends are vital.  This is also why social media done well is so effec­tive.  Yet for what­ever rea­son this idea remains a mys­tery to many.

Here is a dra­matic recre­ation of a con­ver­sa­tion I had ear­lier this week with some­one who was curi­ous about the whole “social media thing.”

Umm.. How do you use social media to gen­er­ate business?

“Make friends.”

How do you make friends?

“Be a good friend.”

Oh, So is the goal then to get as many friends as pos­si­ble so you can then sell them things?

“No, the goal is to be a good friend to your friends– a good stew­ard of the time and effort it takes for them to be your friend.”

What?  Why not just gather names and infor­ma­tion and the “mar­ket” to them?

“If one of your friends knocked on your door at home every night ask­ing for some­thing from you, how long until you stopped answer­ing the door?”

Yeah but if enough friends answer just once I could make up for the ones who shut me out right?

“Sure, until they kick you out of the neigh­bor­hood, tell oth­ers what a jerk you are, and refuse to acknowl­edge you exist.  Just be a good friend.”

I still don’t see how that would help me.

“First, it is not about you.”  “Sec­ond, sup­pose you were a plumber and your friend up the street hap­pened to know you were a plumber.”  “When the pipe under his sink freezes next win­ter, and he needs help he could use the phone book or google to find a plumber or he could call a friend — you — to help him fix his prob­lem.” “If you did a good job, he might tell peo­ple around the neigh­bor­hood about how you came through for him in a bind.”  “They might decide to call you when they have plumb­ing issues, because peo­ple want to do busi­ness with their friends.”  “You now have cus­tomers.”    “With social media, you can have a really big neigh­bor­hood, with really cool neigh­bors.”  “You can help them, they can help you.”   “Be a good friend first.”  “Get more friends as a result.”

Oh…  so what makes a “good friend?”

- More on that next time.  For today remem­ber Mr. Gitomer’s advice “All things being equal, peo­ple want to do busi­ness with their friends.”