In case you have been living under a rock for the last 10 years ‘The Sims’ is a computer game based around regular people doing regular things – it’s like a dolls house filled to the brim with some of the best artificial intelligence ever created.

In order to be successful at The Sims you need to be able to manage relationships. In this game your success in your career is directly correlated with 3 things.

• Your health/Wellbeing – Are you going to work tired from staying up all night? Are you hungry from not eating? – This will affect your success.
• Skill set – Do you have the right skills for the job? If you take the career path of being a Chef, a requirement for the job may be that you need 6 culinary points. If you only have four points, your Sim had better get cooking!
• Relationships – Finally and most importantly are relationships. Whilst skill set is specific to your career, your social currency will directly impact your ability to get a promotion – to hit the next level you may need 2 or 3 additional friends.

If being successful means maintaining relationships, and you want to be the CEO, you have a lot of relationships to maintain! It is important to note at this stage that Sims don’t differentiate between personal and professional relationships. However, as posted in The Theory of Relationship Management they still need to keep a hold on all of them.

So how does a Sim maintain a relationship? Ultimately they keep in touch with their friends. If they have similar interests, they can get deep in conversation and become close friends. If they don’t have much in common they’ll usually just shoot the breeze about the weather etc.. A Sim needs to call their friends on the phone consistently and chat away to keep things strong – they will throw parties or functions to get them all together and then party their way to a better relationship (kind of like a corporate lunch/dinner).

And at the end of the day if they neglect their friends… just like regular life, they lose them and their likelihood of a promotion becomes more difficult.

So how do you manage a relationship?

As a sales person, so much comes back to ‘how much I can sell,’ however I believe that this statement is redundant and belongs somewhere back in the 1940’s. The question today should be ‘how many relationships can I maintain?’

First off let’s define relationships – there are two kinds; personal and professional. Personal relationships are your family and friends. Professional relationships are those related to your career or investments, i.e. clients, staff, managers, suppliers etc.

The truth is, a person can only manage so many relationships before they start letting people down. Whether they are personal or professional is inconsequential. Someone who is a workaholic and works very hard to manage all of their internal and external business relationships will often let their personal relationships down by constantly canceling at the last minute or not answering messages. Similarly, those who place a higher value their personal relationships, will often have difficulty growing and maintaining their professional relationships, which may hinder their professional advancement.

Technology has certainly made it simpler to communicate with your contacts; however it has also created greater transparency and higher expectations for immediate responses. There are very few excuses you can use for not returning a phone call, or if a facebook post remains unanswered. With this in mind it is important to understand that the amount of relationships that you can manage will directly correlate with your success as a business person – that’s networking.

Over the coming weeks I will be discussing ways to better manage these relationships, and the great success that they can bring.