Why Relationships Have Mattered More Than Cold Selling

I’m only a few months into building my own business, but one thing has become very obvious very quickly.

Relationships matter.

A lot.

When I look at where my work has actually come from so far, very little of it has started with me sending a cold message to someone I’ve never met.

Half of my retainer clients are people I knew before I started the business.

A lot of my one-off projects have come from people I already knew too.

Some I’ve worked with before.

Some I’ve met through networking.

Some have come through recommendations.

And then there’s LinkedIn.

People have a surprisingly long memory

Almost every time I post on LinkedIn, something seems to happen.

Sometimes it’s a new enquiry.

Sometimes it’s someone I haven’t spoken to in ages popping up in my messages.

Sometimes it’s just someone saying, “I’ve been meaning to get in touch.”

And I think that’s what I’ve found most interesting.

You really don’t have to be constantly selling.

People might not need your help the day they meet you.

They might not need it the first time they see one of your posts.

Or the fifth.

But then something changes in their business.

They get busier.

They need support.

Someone asks them if they know a VA.

And suddenly they remember you.

Showing up has done more for me than selling

Selling has never been my strongest suit.

Networking, however, I love.

Give me a coffee, a room full of people and an excuse to spend a morning chatting and I’m quite happy.

And I think that’s probably why relationship-led business has felt much more natural to me.

It’s not really about walking into a room thinking:

Who can I sell to?

It’s about getting to know people.

Being interested in what they do.

Keeping in touch.

Helping where you can.

Doing a good job when someone does trust you with work.

And making sure people actually know what you do.

That last bit is probably more important than I realised before starting the business.

People can know you for years and still have absolutely no idea what you could help them with.

Good relationships don’t need an immediate outcome

I’ve had conversations that led to work almost straight away.

I’ve also had conversations where absolutely nothing happened.

And then months later, that person has come back.

Or referred someone.

Or introduced me to somebody else.

That’s the bit I think gets lost when networking becomes purely about leads.

Not every coffee needs to turn into a client.

Not every conversation needs a follow-up sales message.

Sometimes it really is just about staying connected.

My previous work probably shaped this more than I realised

Before starting my own business, I spent years working directly with hundreds of small businesses through a government-funded business support programme.

A huge part of that role was relationships.

Listening to people.

Understanding their business.

Remembering what they were working on.

Connecting them with the right person or support when I could.

Following up.

And sometimes just being someone they knew they could come back to.

Looking at it now, I don’t think I left that way of working behind when I started my own business.

I’ve just brought it with me.

It probably explains why I’d much rather build a network slowly than send 100 cold messages to people who have never heard of me.

People buy from people is a cliché for a reason

It gets said all the time.

But I’m starting to understand why.

There has to be some level of trust.

Especially when you’re asking someone to come into the behind-the-scenes part of your business.

Your inbox.

Your CRM.

Your clients.

Your processes.

The things that aren’t always neat and polished.

Knowing someone — or knowing someone who knows them — makes that decision feel very different.

So for now, I’m going to keep doing what seems to be working.

Showing up.

Going to networking events.

Talking to people.

Posting on LinkedIn.

Doing good work.

And trusting that not every conversation needs to turn into something immediately.

Also, if you see me doing any of the above from a GWR train, there’s about a 50/50 chance the WiFi is either saving my working day or I’m standing on a platform wondering where the train is.

So far, I think we’re even.

This Note started life as a post I shared on LinkedIn.