• There are two currencies you need in the world to grow rich and become more financially successful. The first currency is money and the second currency is relationships. These two currencies must work for you to create wealth and achieve financial success. And among the two currencies relationship is the most powerful and beneficial. This is because you can get to the top without money but with the right relationships. But you cannot get to the top having money alone.

Money needs relationships to thrives because all the wealth in the world is created in the context of a relationship. That is, two people must first like, trust and agree with each other to do business or engage in an income-producing activity to create wealth. And while Relationships can produce money, money cannot produce relationships. Thus, you can have all the money in the world and still be far behind in life if you lack important relationships.

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Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, a one-time legendary speaker and author, puts it this way, “you remain the same person year after year except for the people you meet and the books you read. So, if becoming rich and wealthy is important to you. You must master the art of building profitable relationships and connecting with the right kind of people. Building relationships that produce wealth is thus the fastest way to get to the top. And getting to the top is all about connecting with people that have the advantage that you lack in your own life.

How then do you create profitable relationships?

To create profitable relationships, you must first recognize that there is an unequal distribution of wealth and advantage in the world. And that for you to be successful, you need to connect with other people. That is, those who have the advantages that you seek. The truth is other people have the answers, deals, money, access, power, and influence that you need to achieve your goals. And they will only give it to you if you are in a relationship with them.

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There are two elements that must be present in a relationship to make other people want to invest in your own success. The first is trust. And the second is your ability to solve their problems or offer value. Trust is saying something and doing it consistently over a consecutive period of time. Solving problems for the people you want to attract is also key. This is because people generally care less about your success and more about their own success. So, the only way to get them invested in your success is to first solve a problem that they care about. And the only way for someone to open up about their problems to you is if you are in a close and trusted relationship.

What is a Close Relationship?

Close relationships are relationships that are bound by mutual interests, mutual respect, and mutual values. Most close relationships are formed within private and sometimes closed environments. A typical example is relationships formed within the confines of a family, a school, an office, a club, an estate, or an event. This kind of relationship is the most trusted relationship and it carries the greatest potential for wealth. Thus, to create wealth two things are important – the quality of your close relationships and your ability to convert strangers into close friends. All relationships must first become close for them to be beneficial for your success. Thus, without trusted close relationships and the ability to create them, it is hard to create wealth or achieve financial success.

READ: 5 habits of Nigeria’s business billionaires you should emulate

Now you may say to yourself, ‘but I have close relationships, why am I not yet successful?’

The answer is simple.

While every close relationship has trust in them, not all close relationships can produce income. In fact, no close relationship is designed to automatically create wealth. You have to make them create wealth. Close relationships are like a seed. They are ineffective as seeds but when planted and nurtured can become trees. This means that you must master the art of planting and nurturing your close relationships to become wealth trees.

How do you build wealth-creating relationships?

Before I show you how to build wealth creating relationships. Let me first show you the two kinds of close relationships that exist.

The first is the wealth-consuming relationships. And the second is the wealth creating relationships.

Wealth-consuming relationships are relationships that use up capital. They are also known as social relationships. And comprise family relationships, certain friendship relationships, and religious associations. The way the members of this group add value to each other is by offering emotional or spiritual value in exchange for financial support. Wealth-consuming relationships are thus not designed to create wealth and it is hard to make them wealth creating in nature. Nevertheless, they are important relationships. And provide essential spiritual and emotional balance. So, the only way to thrive financially regardless of them is to combine them with the second kind of relationship – the wealth-creating relationship.

Wealth-creating relationships are relationships that produce income or enlarge opportunities. They are also known as professional or business relationships. Professional or business relationships comprise relationships with co-workers, peers, and club members. They also include relationships with your neighbors, customers, partners, vendors, advisors, etc. Members of this group are pre-sold on creating wealth. They are open to learning about new information. Discovering new ideas and opportunities. Open to doing business together and meeting new people. The way this group adds value to themselves is by pointing each other in the right direction. They connect each other to people, businesses, opportunities, and organizations that can help them. And they support each other through difficult times. Although most people have these relationships, they are still not wealthy.

The reason for this is simple

Professional and business relationships will not automatically create wealth for you. They have to be made to create wealth. These relationships are like seeds. They are ineffective as seeds but when planted and nurtured can become trees. This means that you must not only know how to develop these relationships. You must also know how to turn them into wealth trees. To convert professional or business relationships into wealth-creating relationships you need to do three things.

First, you need to become a high-income problem solver. Second, you need to become a value connector. And third, you need to join a wealth-creating problem-solving platform. Let’s look at each of these points in detail

1.Become a high-income problem solver

A high-income problem solver is anyone that solves problems that produce high income. Solving problems for people is the only way to create wealth and enter into high-quality relationships with other people.  To solve problems, you need experience. And the fastest way to gain experience is through your own personal journey. Personal experience can make you an instant expert in an area that would usually take years of hard labour in school to develop. Being an expert is important to build trust with your close relationships.

For example, if you are passionate about weight loss but are struggling with losing your own weight, you have an excellent opportunity to become an expert in that area especially for those who are struggling to lose weight. All you need do is overcome your own struggles and lose weight. And then you can help other struggling people do the same. When you successfully solve your own personal problems, you become the expert that can help others solve the same problem. This makes you more magnetic and interesting to other people. The key here is to create such a rich life that has many inspiring stories, experiences, and achievements. You must reach the point in your life where you have a lot of “How Did You Do This” stories. How did you get enough money to start your first business? How did you rise to become the CEO of a multinational company? How did you overcome cancer? How did you stay married for 50years? How did you achieve Financial freedom etc.? The more “how did you do this” stories you have the easier it will be to connect with people and build rich relationships.

However, you must ensure that some of your how did you do it stories can produce high income. And involve solving problems that affect a lot of people. You must also ensure that you begin helping people as soon as you start taking the right steps and not after you have achieved your end goal.  Sometimes being an expert does not mean that you are perfect or have arrived. It simply means that you have taken certain steps that others are struggling to take. And you can guide them. If you are ahead of anyone in a particular area you can become the expert in that area to them. Becoming a high-income problem solver is thus not just important for earning a high income but also important for building rich relationships. When you master the art of solving high-income problems you become a valuable person that other people want to meet.

To be continued next week…

About the author

Grace Agada is the most sought-after Financial Planning expert in the country and is quoted frequently in leading Newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Grace is a Renowned Keynote Speaker, Author, and Column Contributor in Punch Newspaper, This Day Newspaper, Vanguard newspaper, Business Day Newspaper, Leadership Newspaper, The Tribune Newspaper, and Online Platforms like Nairametrics, Proshare, and Bellanaija. Grace is the Founder of “The University of Wealth” The author of “The Financial Freedom MBA Program”, “The Better Life in Retirement Planning Blueprint” and “The Wealthy Business Blueprint”. Grace is on a mission to shrink the middle class and populate the upper class. She has been featured on BBC Africa. Business Day TV. Inspiration FM. and inside Naijatv. And she consults for Numerous Top Organizations, Company Directors, CEOs, Senior Executives, and High-Income Professionals.

Business owners are oftentimes required to make certain changes to their business operations to achieve more profits, and in this era of the COVID-19 global pandemic, making these changes has become more urgent to ensure the survival and continuity of businesses.

To make this happen, business owners need to see to the deployment of certain strategies that can increase revenue and ultimately, increase the net profit of their businesses.

1. Lead generation and conversion

Lead generation is a process that is used to attract new prospects to a business. The process also aims at converting prospects to paying customers. Suppose your business has five paying customers already, you can use lead generation to increase the number of paying customers to ten and in so doing, double your profit.

Lead generation requires you to reassess your sales processes and methodology. A reassessment will show you areas where your sales effort is lacking, new sales tactics and channels that you can adopt, and new markets that you may have previously ignored. When all these are optimised, your sales conversion rate increases and so does your profit.

2. Optimising each transaction

When trying to increase revenue (and ultimately, profits), there are many things you can do. You can increase the price of your products or services, cut costs, increase the number of customers buying from you or increase the volume of sales you make to the same number of customers. The last option is sometimes the easiest and cheapest to implement immediately and it can be done by either upselling or cross-selling customers.

Upselling simply means encouraging customers to buy other products (some of which may be pricier) from you, than the one they would usually buy, while cross-selling tries to get customers to buy related or complementary items. Upselling and cross-selling make it easy for you to generate more revenue from the same number of customers without incurring additional marketing cost.

 3. Adding value to your product or service

Again, one of the ways to increase revenue is to increase the price of your products or services but this is not always as easy to achieve as it sounds because most customers are averse to price increments especially in highly competitive markets and in times of economic decline.

One way to successfully increase the price of your products or services without losing your customers is to find ways to add value to your offering such that you clearly stand apart from competing brands. You can do this in many ways. Adding a complimentary item with a negligible cost, increasing the size or quantity of your product (or the scope of your service offering), offering after-sales service, and offering small incentives are some ways to differentiate your product (or service) from those of your competitors.

4. Reach a global audience

The world has become a global village and language translation services have made it easy for businesses to communicate with customers across different continents, cultures and languages. To target a wider range of customers from across the globe, it is expedient that you include language translation options on your website. When organizing digital events, make sure to provide remote interpreting in order to reach a multilingual audience. This level of localization will ensure that you are communicating your value proposition clearly to everyone in your audience.

5. Customer acquisition costs

Consider how much money you spend to acquire every paying customer. You need to continuously be on the lookout for creative ways to advertise and promote your business without significantly increasing your marketing cost.

To reduce your marketing spend, you can encourage your customers to refer your products or services to people in their network. You can offer customers a small discount or some other incentives with a negligible cost in exchange for referrals. You can also leverage social media networks to generate more leads for your business.

Developing a well-structured and functional referral system can increase your revenue exponentially within a short time frame.

Conclusion

Putting the simple strategies taught in this article to use and helping your team to do so can help you optimise your business processes for greater profitability.

About author

Rachel Eleza, Growth Marketing Director at UpSuite and a part-time writer.