Real Leaders Don't Follow: Being Extraordinary in the Age of the Entrepreneur by Steve Tobak

Author:Steve Tobak
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781613083208
Publisher: Entrepreneur Press
Published: 2015-10-18T14:00:00+00:00

PEOPLE PEOPLE

You’d be surprised to know just how many business relationships you have. We don’t even think about it because they’re so intricately infused into nearly every aspect of our lives. Accountants, lawyers, doctors, dentists, brokers, insurance agents, auto and home repair professionals, delivery people, utility service people—it’s a long list.

To all these people, you’re a customer. You matter.

When it comes to your livelihood, business relationships get even more involved. At work you have a boss or two, coworkers, and staff. If you own a business or run a company, you have employees, investors, vendors, and customers. You have IT, HR, benefits, and finance people.

You don’t just do business with all these people. You relate to them on all sorts of different levels—more than you realize. And how you engage and interact with them has a surprisingly significant impact on your career and business. Any one of these people can change your life. And in all likelihood, many of them will over the long haul. They’ve certainly changed mine.

If you recall from Chapter 5, I learned how to sell at a rep firm owned by a phenomenal salesman named Phil Richards. That was actually the first time I worked from home. I got a bunch of furniture from Ikea and used the second bedroom of our Redondo Beach townhome as my office. I had a PC, a printer, and a fax machine, but the hands-down most important thing in that office was the telephone.

I had just gotten off the phone with a product manager from a chip company we represented when I looked up to see my wife in the doorway. I had no idea how long she’d been there, but she had a disapproving look on her face. You know, the one that makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” she said.

“I am working,” I replied, maybe a little more defensively than I’d intended.

“No, you’re not,” she said. “I heard you. You were just bullshitting.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Like I said, I’m working.”

She just turned and walked away, shaking her head. At that point, I’m sure she was having second thoughts about my switch from engineering management to sales. She just didn’t get that schmoozing was a really important part of relationship building . . . and the job.

When I’d come home from a long day of calling on customers, she’d ask, “Did you book anything?” I knew she was just giving me a hard time, but it drove me nuts. Selling custom-designed semiconductors in multimillion-dollar deals to big companies like Hughes and Xerox took a lot of time, work, and, yes, relationship building.

There’s actually a very good reason we call it relationship building. You don’t go out and obtain or acquire relationships. You build them. You develop them. Building and developing anything of substantial value takes time, effort, and commitment.

The longer the relationship, the stronger the relationship, the more valuable the relationship. That’s an axiom you should never forget.

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