Nurturing your relationships...
When we went to hear Seth Godin, he talked about cultivating (as farmers do) those who are interested in your product/service.
Ask people who know me and they will tell you that I have a very programmatic approach to managing the relationships I have formed. I send out a quarterly update to different audiences
- my friends
- colleagues in Microsoft
- business contacts
I also call all of my friends each year on their birthdays (and some of my biz colleagues as well)
Peter Ells as Software One has a similar approach. We've never really done work together, but we've chatted a few times over 2.5 years. Yesterday, I got my annual gift of a nice package of coffee.
It was timely for two reasons
- that morning, I had run out of my own
- he may be able to solve a problem I have
You see, Peter has a program called VARAssist that helps VAR's make a lot of money in reselling software. As it turns out, the Get Engaged program is looking for VAR's to execute with in our partner event engine.
I called Peter up and he's going to send me a list of the VAR's they work with...I'll sponsor events with them and Microsoft, the VAR, and Software One all win.
Love it when relationshp management looks like it pays off.