It’s Not Work, It’s Network

One of my favorite books, hands down, is The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer. There’s a line in there that has stuck with me for years: it’s not work, it’s network.

The first time I read that, I thought he simply meant showing up to networking events. Boy, was I wrong! After years building an MSP, I realized he meant something so much bigger: building relationships before you ever need them.

Maybe you’ve been there. Business is booming, your calendar is packed, so you stop networking, skip the chamber meeting, quit posting on LinkedIn. Six months later those projects wrap up, things get quiet, and suddenly you’re asking where all your leads went!

If that cycle sounds familiar, you’re definitely not alone. I call it the sine wave: up, down, up, down. And the biggest lesson I learned running an MSP wasn’t about technology or the cloud or sales technique. It was about relationships, plain and simple.

The People Who Get Referrals Aren’t Always the Best Salespeople

I spent years as a director consultant in BNI, in charge of hundreds of businesses, and served as chapter president of a large chapter more than once! That gave me a front row seat to watch business owners grow their companies, and one thing became crystal clear.

The people receiving the most referrals weren’t always the sharpest salespeople or the cheapest option. Not even close! They were simply the ones who consistently invested in relationships: they showed up, they helped other people, they stayed visible.

When I look back at the MSP we built, very few clients started with a cold call. We did plenty of cold calling, don’t get me wrong, and it worked! But most started with a conversation: an introduction, a networking event, somebody who already knew us.

Some of those relationships didn’t produce a single opportunity for months, sometimes years. Then, out of nowhere, somebody would call after we’d met a year earlier, simply because we stayed connected! Judged by whether they produced an immediate sale, I would have written those conversations off as a waste of time.

Looking back, they were some of the best investments we ever made.

Think of It Like a Bank Account

Here’s how I translate Gitomer’s lesson for MSP owners: your pipeline today is a reflection of the relationships you built six months ago. If it’s thin right now, the answer isn’t to panic. The answer is to start planting seeds again!

Treat every relationship like a bank account. Helping someone solve a problem, sending along a helpful article, congratulating them on something big, showing up at a chamber event: those are deposits. None produce an immediate sale, but they build something more valuable: trust.

Asking for something is a withdrawal: a referral, an introduction, a meeting. And here’s the mistake I see too many MSP owners make. They try to withdraw from an account they never funded! They disappear for a year, then suddenly need business and start calling everyone they know.

I hate to break it to you, but relationships don’t work that way, and neither does treating networking like a light switch: pipeline’s full, so you stop; pipeline’s thin, so you start again. That’s planting a tree the exact day you want shade!

Networking Is a Flywheel, Not a Light Switch

Think of networking as a flywheel instead! At first it feels slow. You meet people and nothing happens. Then people start recognizing your name and trusting you, someone makes an introduction, that introduction becomes a client, and that client refers someone else. That’s when the flywheel really starts spinning, and it’s exactly why the busiest MSP owners should be networking the most, not the least.

Try this exercise. Write down your last five clients and ask where they really came from. A cold call? Maybe! Or maybe a referral, a client introduction, a chamber contact, somebody you’ve known for years. My guess is most trace back to a relationship. People buy from people they know, trust, and remember!

If you want to put this into practice today, head over to our free Cloud Academy and download our Cloud Toolkit! It’s a ready made presentation you can take to local businesses to educate them, not sell them.

Your Challenge This Week

Networking was never about collecting business cards. It’s about investing in relationships long before you need anything back!

So here’s your challenge. Make three deposits into your relationship bank account this week and see what happens! Plant the tree. Nobody expects shade tomorrow, and one day you’ll look up and realize you’re sitting in the shade of a business you built one relationship at a time.

“It’s not work, it’s network.”: Jeffrey Gitomer

Have a great week and weekend!