3 lies organizations tell themselves about relationship management

3 lies organizations tell themselves about relationship management

I apply a solutions based approach to solving complex puzzles for the achievement of systems 


Organizations are made up of humans, and naturally since humans lie to themselves in personal relationships the same can be said for work ones. I’m continuing my review process for customer relationship management (CRM) and also for electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) products.   Another free ELN emailed me the other day, must be good CRM protocols are in place at their organization, because I never heard of them but I’ll post a review once I’ve had time to play with their software a bit.

The email from the aforementioned ELN however, made me think about the whole process of relationship management and what a minefield it can be.  It made me think about the early days of my career where I did a lot of consulting on this topic. It also made me think about the lies my clients used to tell themselves about the process, and perhaps the lies I used to tell myself too. 

  • Instant gratification: I will never forget my first day as a health care specialist (fancy title for an insurance agent). My coworker who was training me took me to this apartment and was hoping to get heard by this couple who only knew him from a phone call. Fortunately, he was able to be heard because I noticed a picture of the man and sat dutifully while he showed me his bronze star and told me the story of how he got it in WW II.  People expect instant gratification in life, business is no different.  The reality is relationship building and management processes take time, a lot of time. It takes an average of 7-9 touches for someone to know, like, and trust the other party and people only buy from those that they know, like, and trust. It’s not built in a day, but it sure can be torn down in one.  Along those lines, a confused market doesn’t buy, if your business partners are confused by your offerings or who you are, better fix that if you want them to buy from you (and that includes building a relationship). 
  • Bad tools=bad process=failure: There is some truth to this lie.  A bad tool can result in these things, but for the most part it’s not the tool it is the human using the tool. If the human doesn’t keep accurate records to be analyzed for quality content etc. There is no way even a good tool can succeed. Everything is in the follow up, I think I say that to people every day. Everything in relationships is about the follow up. Other aspects do exist for relationship building and as I process through other areas of my CRM series I’ll explore some of those, but it all boils down to how good you are at follow up.
  • Fear of rejection gets in the way: It’s generally more complicated than this.  For example, fear of acceptance often gets in the way. It’s usually fear of change, and to quote a colleague of mine (sadly I forgot this wise person’s name as I am writing) “Fear is false evidence appearing real.” People assume they’ll be rejected, or fear getting on the phone, or fear the consequences of building a successful relationship. What would your business do with that new multi-million dollar account? Fear can be used to help or hurt relationship building and management, but often people just get into a fear based pattern of excuses. No lion is going to eat you if someone says no, no lion will eat you if people say yes, and frankly if someone answers the phone you’ve got a 50/50 chance of yes or no. 

I’ve got a really long list for lies people tell themselves about business relationships. I wanted to give you as the reader the opportunity to list the lies you’ve encountered instead of going on about the lies I’ve seen over the years. What’s the biggest lie you’ve told yourself (or been told by someone), what do you think the best way to overcome that lie is?