It’s Fifa World Cup madness at the moment! Although there are some stunning individual athletes, there’s no question that the strongest teams are those that work together as a cohesive whole – with powerful ties between players. We see this in our own All Blacks; they’re at their best when the ties within the team are strong. This sort of teamwork seems to be questioned with Team New Zealand and the new bid for the next America’s Cup.
Many years ago an influential researcher named Mark Granovetter stated that when networking for employment, you should look through your weak ties or connections in order to more efficiently reach your goal. Through your weak ties, he argued, you would find the most new information and new opportunities. From his research came the expression: ‘The strength of weak ties.’ Since then, many people have focused on simply expanding the number of connections they have rather than focusing on the quality of those connections.
More recent research however, has revealed that this theory doesn’t hold for business relationships. A study entitled: The Strength of Strong Ties in Business Referral Networks, showed that those who focused on strong ties – rather than weak ties – were able to increase the number of referrals from networking by 2100%, with an increased value of 63%. Based on this new research it’s clear that “weak ties” may be relevant to job searches but that “strong ties” are critical for the generation of greater quality business referrals.
Your strong ties, or connections, are people with whom you develop a deeper level of trust. Trust is key in the generation of business referrals. If you give a referral for business services, your reputation goes with that. When you give a good referral, it enhances your reputation. When you give a bad referral, it hurts your reputation. People who have strong ties want to make sure that the trust level gets stronger and is not damaged with a bad referral.
One obvious way to build strong ties is through dances. Having a one-to-one meeting with another member is an excellent opportunity to get to know more about that person’s business by asking them more specific questions. There are a lot of things that come out of a dance. Often you learn things about people’s businesses that you never would have known by listening to their 60-seconds. There may well be a synergy with the type of clients you both have as well. Even if you’ve danced with a person a few times already this year, keep dancing as there’s always something new that comes out of every meeting.
We’re at BNI to increase business, build trust and great relationships so try to increase the number of dances you do and see the great results that flow from this.
