Ok, So Networking works. We all know this – If you go to a function, you meet someone and you can find equally beneficial value… or you just get along, you have networked and now you have a new contact.

But what about “internetworking” or “networking 2.0” or most commonly “Social Networking.” Here’s the simple truth… If you’re not doing it… Start Now!

It’s not going away! It’s like automatic road tolling, you can resist it all you want, but eventually the manual booths will and have gone – and the “I haven’t given you my credit card and have 3 days to pay system is terrible!”

Join Twitter and Linked In – These are the two best business tools for internetworking. Facebook is much more personal and myspace is for kids and bands. Linked In lets you easily manage the people you network in the real and the cyber world, and Twitter is the ultimate information spreading and receiving device.

So be cool, and retweet me.

In all of my life, from a child until now, I have always noticed that there are two types of successful people. There are those people who get successful to the success of everyone around them, and those that get successful to the detriment of everyone around them. The question therein lies, do you climb over the bodies to get to where you want to go, or do you try and build everyone up around you and hope that someone notices…

I believe strongly in the latter – in my opinion, what’s the point of being successful if you don’t get to share it with anyone. You need people to high five on the way up because they’re the people that will help you when things aren’t going so well. When you’ve climbed over bodies to get to the top, the way down is usually not so friendly – people will welcome your demise.

The fact of the matter is, if you do something great and don’t tell people, quite often someone else will take credit for it. If credit is available, it will get taken. This is how people can get up to the detriment of those around them. I am very vocal about my wins, and I am very vocal about the wins of the people in my team. It gives me as much satisfaction to brag about a colleague’s success as it does to brag about my own. That’s the whole idea of a team, isn’t it?

I guess the point of this entry was that you should always celebrate successes, and create a culture of celebrating them. This should help stir on more wins. People who climb over the bodies on the path to success are often known for it within an organisation or a university – I reckon this is where the saying ‘it gets pretty lonely at the top’ must come from. When I get to the top I want all of my colleagues there with me… Then we can have an awesome party!

People are busy. I don’t know anyone who is not currently busy in their own right. With this in mind, how do you effectively manage a business relationship with a busy person? First of all, let me clarify what it means to ‘manage these relationships’. I am not talking about constantly being in contact with people through mass media such as e-news, flyers, magazines, twitter, social media etc. I’m talking about creating and managing real business relationships.

Taking into consideration the fast pace of everyone’s lives, it is not hard to stand out if you do the right things. The title of this post sums it up; little things will make your business relationships more personal and warm as well as enjoyable – what’s the point of having relationships if you’re not into it anyway??? One of the best quotes to sum this up comes from one of my hero’s, Dale Carnegie – the line from his book ‘How to win friends and influence people‘ is:

‘Become genuinely interested in people.’

You can’t fake caring. In a fast paced society, taking a genuine interest in people and caring about them will ultimately create lasting relationships.

So let’s pause for a moment in our busy lives and remember some old-school tactics that show you care.

• A simple note– Caring is knowing a client has a function on a Thursday night and sending an SMS on Thursday morning wishing them good luck. It’ll take you all of 30 seconds to send the message, and I guarantee you that it will make their day and add to their excitement.
• Memory - Remembering your client’s kid’s names and asking how they are. Remembering that your client was going on a holiday last time you spoke to them, and asking them how it was. Memory deserves its own dedicated blog entry. If you have a rubbish memory… write it down! This is what a CRM system is for – if your company doesn’t have one, start your own.
• Be interested – Ask them how their business is. Become genuinely interested in their success – this will build a relationship that spans across multiple careers.
• Thoughtful surprises – Turn up to the meeting with a bottle of water for them – if they are stressed, bring them cake… Your care will build more rapport in five minutes than five thousand e-newsletters.

These are a very small snippet of ways you can better manage business relationships. Remember that you can’t fake it, but you can prepare yourself for it. If you are asking how things are and are clearly not interested it will come through in your body language and tone. If this is you I suggest you get out and start meeting people – learn how great and rewarding social interaction can be.

In short, busyness prevents the little things, the little things are caring and caring creates relationships. If you know anyone who could gain value from this please forward it on and watch yourself and your friends start to effectively Manage Business Relationships.

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?