I’m writing this as I prepare to head over to my yacht, the tastefully named Seasquirter ?, to host one of my regular Thursday night dinners.
If you are new to this newsletter or don’t follow me on social media, I have been hosting these dinners for most of this year, since the yacht arrived in Dubai from her old home in Cannes. Each week I invite 4 or 5 contacts that I am looking to build a deeper relationship with, and they all bring a guest with them too, meaning that I get to expand my network with more interesting and valuable connections at the same time.
The evening follows some of my key rules of networking and relationship building:
Take a FOCUSED Approach
Specifically selecting which guests I want to invite. There is no scattergun randomness. I individually select the people I know I need a great relationship with.
I CONTROL
The environment by inviting people onto my yacht and paying the cost of everything. When I pay, it is a lot easier for me to make the rules. And when people are on my yacht, they are a totally captive audience that can’t fail to remember me and want to talk with me.
I ADD VALUE
By helping the guests meet each other and making personalised introductions and recommendations where appropriate. Many people who have attended previous dinners have done deals together, and I ask for nothing in return. I am just happy to have been the introductory part of their success. Every time they see their new business partner, I guarantee they remember that Matt Haycox is the reason they got together.
I FOLLOW UP
The next morning, thanking everyone for their attendance, reminding them of anything we discussed, and sharing the contact details of the fellow attendees. Deepening their memory of me while the fun night is still fresh in their minds.
If you have been paying attention to me, you will have heard me bang on about these network rules at every chance I get. But this week, two other unexpected business lessons cropped up while I was arranging the dinner. And one of them is solely responsible for me raising over £100 million from investors in the last 5 years. So stop skimming through this now and pay attention!
I always use the same caterer for the event, and every Monday I confirm the numbers for the coming week. But this week, after months of working together, the caterer told me they were too busy this Thursday, and I hadn’t given them enough notice, so they couldn’t cook for me.
I reminded them that I always tell them on Monday, but they said this week was unusually busy.
Four weeks ago, a girl who used to work for me called to say she now worked for a catering company and would like the chance to quote for the Thursday night dinners. I declined her request as I was more than happy with the existing caterer, and it isn’t my style to chop and change. I give loyalty to people who perform for me, and I have no interest in spending my time trying to save fractional amounts of money on non-core items.
But this was her chance to get a foot in the door! So I told my existing caterer that there was someone else snapping at their heels, and if they didn’t cook for me this week, then I would be using this new company, and there was the risk that I would never go back again.
Even that wasn’t enough to change their mind about being too busy.
Now I can’t tell you if the food is any good yet, as I won’t have eaten it before I finish writing this! But I can tell you that if it is better than the usual food, then I will (obviously) be making a permanent change.
So what are the business lessons here? Don’t worry, I am not just whining about my cooking problems!
PLAY THE LONG GAME
Whether it is because they are lazy, weak, take ‘no’ for an answer too easily, or their ego just won’t let them keep going back to someone who has previously declined them, most business owners and salespeople give up far too soon.
Unless you have invented something earth-shattering, the chances are that your prospects are already buying a similar product from one of your competitors. And most of them are probably happy in the relationship they are in. Or even if they are not happy, they are probably satisfied enough not to spend their time shopping around for something if it isn’t utterly essential to their business success.
So do you give up when they say ‘No’? Absolutely not! If a hot girl tells you she won’t date you because she is already in a relationship, what do you do? You send her flowers every month to remind her you exist so that when her current boyfriend fucks up, you are ready to jump in!
And just like all boyfriends eventually let down their girls, all suppliers eventually do something that pisses their customers off.
So you need to be there, waiting in the wings, to help them out of a jam. But you can only do that if you are prepared to maintain a relationship, to market to them, and to continue to invest in knowing them, even when they keep knocking you back.
Years ago, I met a financial adviser who I absolutely knew could deliver millions in investor relationships. I tried to pitch him, but he told me that, as much as he liked me and my product, he already had a relationship with someone like me who did a decent job. Why would he therefore take the risk of fixing what wasn’t broken?
Did I wish him well in his current relationship? Absolutely not! I told him that I would build a relationship with him and wait as long as it took, because I was convinced that one day we would do business together. I bought him great dinners with incredible wines. I sent him gifts. I would text and call regularly (never in an annoying salesy way, just for fun chats). And then one day, after 18 months, BOOM! He told me something had gone wrong with an existing investment, and he wanted to try my product.
Since then, over £100 million has been raised! Does it look like I wasted my time and money now? Obviously not! It looks like the investment of the century!
Now only you know what the margins of your product are and what your customer lifetime value is, so you will have to make your own decisions on how much time and money you invest in relationship building. But the principle is the same for every business.
NEVER LET A CLIENT DOWN
And that is the flip side of this situation. Because there is always someone out there playing the long game, waiting for you to let a customer down so they can steam on in there.
Now don’t read this thinking that I am being all petty and being unfair to my caterer, who was unavoidably too busy. I appreciate that there are always going to be occasional situations where you are unable to assist a client, yet someone else is.
I am just trying to highlight to you the risk of what happens when someone else gets their foot through the door. Customers are fickle people, and someone else can turn their head quite easily under the right circumstances. And that could mean years of relationship-building and future income down the drain.
Your job as a business owner is to move mountains, to do the impossible, to make yourself so valuable and indispensable at ALL TIMES!
If you concentrate on taking a long-term view and doing everything possible never to let people down then you can’t fail to have MASSIVE SUCCESS.
Make sure you stay around for next week’s newsletter so I can tell you how the food was and whether or not I have a new relationship!
I also want to say a big thank you to over 10,000 of you who subscribe to this newsletter. Our audience is growing and our open rate is climbing, so I really appreciate the support and hope you feel it is beneficial as much as I feel flattered.
As always, anything you want to ask me or want me to cover, get in touch, and I will do my best to include it in a future issue.
