Why are Personal Relationships so IMPORTANT for Business Today?

Let me be quite clear about this. Having good personal relationships with one’s clients never, never, never used to be important thirty years (or more) ago. They have become important because the corporate world has so sucked up all the business that there is very little business left for anyone else. So long as one wasn’t rude to one’s client, one could quite happily sell to them. Think about it. Do you honestly go into a big store and have to have a relationship with the owner of the toothpaste company before you buy their particular brand of toothpaste? Of course, not! 



When you decide to buy a particular make of car, it’s not based on the fact that you like the owner of the manufacturing business; it’s based on whether the product measures up to what you want. Sure you may decide you might prefer to deal with one dealer over another. But it’s only really if one dealer was rude to you. If you don’t know any dealers personally, so long as the first dealer you approach gives you a decent price and is nice to you, he absolutely and utterly does NOT have to develop a personal relationship with you in order to sell you a car you’ve already decided you wanted.

Prostituting Oneself for Business

So what’s happening out there so that there are so many small businesses and net gurus telling one that one has to ‘develop relationships’ in order to get business/



Whatever happened to the view that ‘cupboard love’ was unethical? Why is it considered that cupboard love is okay for business development? No, it’s not. It is a terrible, terrible thing that we now have to pretend affection and interest in others in order to get their business. And, please don’t tell me that it mustn’t be a pretense. It’s not humanly possible to have solid relationships with more than about two hundred people, and as those two hundred people include your dearest and best family and friends, there’s not much left over for ‘business connections.’ This is solid research, by the way, and it is known as Dunbar’s number.



Dunbar's number

A few days ago, yet another immigrant to this country said to me that American's had no concept of friendship. While Americans may take exception to that statement, the fact is that immigrants speak about it all the time. I think what they really mean is that the depth of relationship common to warmer cultures is missing in the American culture. I think what really happens here has something to do with Dunbar's number. I think that there is a direct correlation between the number of people one interacts with and the depth of relationship. Unhappily for human beings to be happy and whole, deep relationships are required. That's how we evolved - with fewer people and deeper relationships. I think when we have many shallow relationships, it results in a deep, unfulfilled feeling that leads to depression and stress.



Social Networking Sites for Business

Essentially, all those people adding one on social networks, and doing so because they’re hoping to sell one something, are guilty of cupboard love.



Now I don’t know how they live with themselves, but I am absolutely and utterly not capable of that sort of hypocrisy.



So here’s the thing. How does one make money or sell one’s product if one is not forced by necessities of survival to pretend an approval or friendship of others when there is nothing of the kind?

Number of Clients of Big Companies

Facebook has close to one billion clients; AT&T have 71.3 million; Walmart has

100 million clients per year; Apple has more than 120 million customers; 

Kill Big Corporations

The reason this has happened is because big corporations take the bulk of business and there is very little left for small business. If you think about the relationship building that is required, it is absolutely insane. It’s just not humanly possible to have sufficient personal relationships with people to make one’s business profitable. So what exactly is being advocated here. What is being advocated is that one brown noses and flatters everybody out there so that they can like you and do business with you. Ethical? Absolutely not. And anyone who prides themselves on having a soul and advocating this type of business practice is lying to themselves.



The way out of this is to make all business smaller and to realize that big business is taking it all, and that’s one very, very big reason why big business kills small business. They take all the clients. Everytime you buy from a big company, you are shooting yourself in the foot because you are removing business from a small business and making them resort to unethical business practice.



Incidentally, two or three hundred years ago, all small business did have deep relationships with the people they sold to. However, those were the people living around them in their own communities.