Building business relationships in a recession

Jaana Collins is Stuff's Director of Agency Markets, a strategically driven agency professional with unrivalled connections across the media industry.

One thing has remained true in every one of these sales situations: People buy from who they know and who they can trust to add value.

Here are five things to remember when building trust and connections in business:

EQ is crucial — Building trust person-to-person requires a high level of emotional intelligence (EQ).
Relationships aren't set and forget — Even if your relationships are solid, you have to do the work and add value.
Protecting your patch isn't always a good idea — Trying to protect your patch and keep your relationships exclusive can negatively affect your business.
Authenticity is key — With the rise of AI, some businesses may be tempted to let technology take on the work of building and maintaining relationships. But this should be done very cautiously.
Every client is a person — Underpinning all of this is the fact that every client is a person.