In a recently conducted Harvard Business Review Study, preliminary results underscore one fact: Despite the rise of personal relationship technologies (video conferencing, email, chat, …), face-to-face interactions remain crucial for building successful long-term relationships.
Some statistics about face-to-face meetings:
- 95%: face-to-face meetings are key to success in building relationships
- 87%: they help “seal a deal”
- 79%: they are highly effective to meet new clients
All of this is not news. But in an environment where cutting travel cost is an imperative for many companies, the use of alternative technologies is often overvalued. As important as they are to move a deal along or to quickly address and overcome certain business issues, they cannot make up for the human touch that any lasting business relationship needs. So when it comes to conducting your business successfully during these hard times, resist the temptations to rely too heavily on personal relationship technologies. Not every business trip is needed any longer, but business trips in general are.
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Thank you for the quick insights you provided as well as the link to the HBR study which contains a number of interesting data points.
John, you’re very welcome. Thanks for the feedback and keep checking back with us…
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