Friends or Just Colleagues

 

Can you have friends at work or are they just colleagues? I wonder if your first answer to the question is different from the one once you have read this article.

 

Surely our “friends” all come from our personal life but when you invest so much time in work (a large majority of your life), your career, your environment why would you not bond & connect with people in varying circumstances and become friends. So, in essence friends can come from all areas, especially work.

 

I have to say, after 20yrs+ of working in the Print Industry I count myself to be very lucky to call some of the people (both work colleagues and customers) my friends. The Print Industry is a great international mix of people from all different backgrounds and you seem to gravitate to the people you get on with and steer clear from the ones that are more “challenging”. But all in all, there are some great characters who are always willing to help others often before even themselves. It makes perfect sense when you think about it, if you spend a lot of time with people and sometimes this period is under great pressure then you can build lasting bonds. More so when in our industry at this time we must help one another for a whole multitude of reasons that are way beyond our control. And let’s face it, over the last 75 years there has never been a time offering so much uncertainty with the combination of a global pandemic and European war.

 

So, how do you combine friendship and sales? The answer is really quite simple you have to know who you are and work on what your proposition really is and not you trying to be desperate to sell to them – no one actually likes anyone who always goes into “sales mode” and launches into the same pitch you give everyone else, people buy from people and how you define what you do and how good your service is in the business environment. So, in selling whatever it is just be yourself and most of all be honest, a sale is not worth losing a friendship for as the latter bring so much more and will account for much more than just pounds and pennies.

 

I mentioned before about this challenging environment, we now engage with people we have not and may never meet in person. Although we have not actually met them or spend any considerable time with them, we may be engaged with them every day online in a business meeting, a couple of times now as we have started get back out there, I have thought to myself, I thought they would be taller! Nevertheless the pandemic has showed we can build a good relationship with someone without having to be face-to-face, we don’t need to be in someone’s company, we just prefer to be!

 

As we open up and strive to be back to what our normality was, I think we will still rely on the relationships we have and continue to build upon. Everyone needs some help from time to time and I for one am happy to rely upon my network who never let me down in providing a solution.