Book Number 1 on my Book-a-Week list for 2011 – The Power of Who by Bob Beaudine
Bob Beaudine is President and CEO of Eastman and Beaudine, an executive search firm in the Dallas area geared towards sports and entertainment. Beaudine’s book promo video states his message perfectly, “You’ve got WHO!” So many of us spend so much time trying to cultivate new relationships that will get us the next client or the next job. We join clubs, attend networking meetings and schedule 1:1s with people, forgetting that the most important relationships are the ones we already have! The people who will help us most are the people who know us best and care the most about us. He shares a big personal realization that prompted him to write his book: He did an analysis of the connections that helped him get business over a ten year period. Of 5,100 connections in his database, he got ten years of business from only 87 of them!
I haven’t yet done this type of analysis of my business, and I don’t have nearly the number of contacts in my database that Beaudine has, but I suspect an analysis of where my clients have come from would yield similar findings. And what his book made me realize is that I want to do an even better job cultivating those professional and personal relationships that mean the most to me. Asking how I can help those people, asking what is important to them, connecting them with people they can help and who can help them, sharing my vision and goals with them so they know how to connect me. That sounds a lot more fun than racing around trying to attend every possible meeting I can to connect with new people. Not that I don’t believe in networking; it’s an important part of building a business. But whatever the method of connecting, it needs to be purposeful to make a difference in my business. And I plan to make all my connecting more purposeful this year.
Great book, easy read, and while in many ways a “one message” book, it is still worth the read for all the great stories and reinforcement Beaudine shares. I highly recommend it!