In today’s hypercompetitive world, your network and relationships offer a key competitive advantage. Your network is full of untapped opportunities and possibilities. However, the volume and scale at which your network operates are pretty intense. It is imperative to manage this scale by categorizing and determining which relationships need to be prioritized, organized, and targeted. Also, we tend to think of our relationships as transactions and prioritize pushing them through the CRMs and other tools rather than building a solid rapport. The problem is that our network and connections are more than just peers, customers, investors, partners, etc. They are people. Most of your relationship data is in your communication streams like email and calendar. This data paints the most profound picture of our relationships. Still, most of it goes to waste due to a lack of credible relationship intelligence hidden in this data. These issues cause your relationships to suffer and limit your ability to build and maintain a solid and valuable network.

Stay organized

As I’m sure you can attest, senior business leaders can receive a few thousand emails each month. It’s nearly impossible for them to manage all of those relationships in their heads. This means it must be documented, but documentation can be scattered, making it difficult to search for data dispersed across various tools.

Effective relationship information management is essential for providing a single source of truth and a centralized place to keep organized and up to date on the relationships that determine your success. Given the vast amount of valuable data generated by senior business leaders in their day-to-day work, they can’t afford to lose data or generate bad relationship data. Getting organized with relationship information as a hub of current, accurate information allows their data to work for them. With actionable data at the fingertip, they’ll categorize and sort through their relationships in a structured and prioritized way.

Build a powerful brand

One powerful way to source opportunities is to build a powerful brand. While there are numerous ways to improve brand image, few strategies rival networking, and relationships. The relationship intelligence can alert decision-makers when a relationship is at risk or when an outreach hasn’t received a response. As a result, they can forge strong relationships and stay top-of-mind with key relationships.

Foster long-lasting relationships

The best business leaders see every interaction as an opportunity to grow their relationships with peers, customers, investors, and partners. More and more, today’s leaders are prioritizing finding people who they can trust and who will be long-term partners.

Often we don’t develop a consistent communication cadence with people in our network. The result is we lose trust and drop the ball on some relationships. It can also happen when you reach out with old or inaccurate information. The smart use of relationship intelligence technologies can avoid all these relationship faux pas. Having fingertip access to the context and critical information about people in your network would make you smarter and thoughtful. You can quickly identify any relationship that might be due for some attention, relationships that might otherwise have been inadvertently dropped.

Spend time wisely

The reality for businesses everywhere is —most of your wins come from a very few of your relationships. So the key question is which relationships are most valuable?

The most significant value of relationship information is not the volume of data (though important) but the ability to leverage relationship intelligence within that data. Every record in this data is about a real relationship. Business leaders should spend their valuable time building and supporting relationships, not managing that data. Leveraging automated relationship intelligence alongside transparency means that leaders can become informed and productive and spend their time where it matters.

Leverage referrals

To optimize the opportunities flow, business leaders need to double down on referrals. The key is to widen your reach. With relationship intelligence, decision-makers will be able to scan their network for lucrative referrals intelligently. For example, they can ask intelligent questions such as "Which biotech CEOs have I been in contact with over the last year?" or "Which experts do I know in the retail sector?" that can shed light on lucrative referral opportunities.

Add intelligence to CRM systems

Traditional CRM products are primarily designed for high volume, transactional selling and not for complex, relationship-driven information management—That's why up to 70% of CRM implementations fail. Adding relationship intelligence to CRMs offer new insights that lead to new connections in your company's shared network. For example, intelligent algorithms can measure relationship strength and lead to warmer introductions. And data enrichment provides additional context around people and organizations.

Business leaders have a lot of data at their disposal. It's no longer possible or wise for them to track and manage network information manually. And it's easy for valuable relationships to fall between the cracks. Instead, they need a smart platform powered by intelligent algorithms and technologies to support them. Today leaders need to centralize their relationship data, allowing them to build workflows and processes that they can trust on top of it. An automated relationship intelligence technology would enable them to track, monitor, and follow up with relationships easily. For decision-makers, this would be a force multiplier.