The document discusses the importance of building and maintaining strong relationships, as relationship strength is critical for success at work, with prospects, and customers. It notes that traditional CRM software has failed to help with real person-to-person relationships and that maintaining more than 150 meaningful relationships is difficult due to cognitive limits. Finally, it provides tips on measuring and strengthening relationships through sharing time, knowledge, generosity, and network connections.

1. v
Exploring the Art & Science of
Building Better Relationships.
Frank Falcone
Founder & CEO, Triggerfox Corporation
---
Co-Founder & Program Director
Rotman Centre for CRM Excellence
University of Toronto

2. v
Relationships Matter.

3. v
Why?
Relationship
Strength is
King
Co-workers
Looking for a new job or promotion?
It’s not what you know, or even who you know,
but rather how strong your relationships is with
the people who matter.
Prospects
Winning Business:
“All things being equal, people will do business
with a friend; all things being unequal, people
will still do business with a friend.”
- Mark McCormack
Customers
Keeping Customers:
Not keeping in touch with a customer in a
meaningful way is the #1 reason
why they leave.

4. v
$25 Billion is spent every year on CRM software,
by companies trying to help their employees build
strong relationships with their customers.
CRM
Software

5. v
When it comes to building real
person-to-person relationships,
traditional CRM software has
failed.
CRM systems were built to house
transactional data, not
relationship insights.
CRM

6. v
The Problem
Starting, building and maintaining strong
relationships is not easy.

7. v
DISCONNECTED
WEAK TIE
STRONG TIE
2. Building a Relationship
3. Maintaining a relationship
Do nothing
Do something bad
The Lifecycle of Relationships
1. Starting a Relationship
Understanding The Problem:
Michael Wu. PhD

8. v
The Dunbar Limit
Understanding the Problem:
How many meaningful
relationships can one
person maintain?
Prof. Robin Dunbar found a
relationship between brain
size of primate species and
their group size.
The Dunbar 150: The cognitive limit to the number of individuals
with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships.

9. v
Does the Dunbar limit still apply in modern society?
Michael Wu. PhD

10. v
Measuring Relationship Strength
Time.
Do you put forth the proper amount of
time in maintaining your relationships?
Reciprocity.
Do you give back to your contacts and are
proactively generous?
Intensity.
How do you keep in touch and with what
frequency?
Trust.
Are you being genuine & authentic?
Prof. Mark Granovetter, Ph.D.
Sociologist at Stanford University

11. v
Relationships get stronger when you regularly share your
time, knowledge, generosity and network connections.
The “Relationship” Secret

12. v
Learn to identify the right triggers to act on
Other examples include…
• Prospect is now at the 40% stage of the sales cycle
• Customer just sent out an unhappy tweet about our service
• There was a major merger at their company

13. v
Make it:
• Meaningful
• Unexpected
• Personalized
How you action a trigger matters!
Knowledge
Personal
NetworkYour TimeGifts
Handwritten
Cards

14. v
”In a world that is being reshaped
by the relentless advance of
technology, what stands out are
acts of generosity and
connection that remind us what it
means to be human.”
– Bill Taylor, cofounder of Fast Company magazine

15. v
Contact Info
Frank Falcone, Founder & CEO
Triggerfox Corporation
Direct: 416-435-5458
frank@triggerfox.com
@frankcrm