My sister Melba Gibbs is the Executive Director for Freedom House in Richmond, VA. Freedom House is a halfway house for homeless people trying to get back on their feet. It provides more than food and shelter; it provides skills to jump start a fading life. A few years ago she raised $1,000,000 for the construction of a new facility. In order to keep the facility functioning she has to raise $1.2 million each year in donations.

Melba is quite a sales person. She’s very much like my father. Never met a stranger and can flat "work a room."

I was having a conversation with her recently about her fundraising and I asked her how she does it? She had a very simple answer. "By building relationships." She further stated, "When I need to raise money in any situation, I use those long term and strong relationships that have been built over many years. They know I am always truthful, sincere and would never to try to pull the wool over their eyes. Respect, reputation, and consistency are the key elements to building these successful relationships."

Isn’t that what all selling is about? It doesn’t matter if you’re selling cars, insurance, a service or dreams. It’s all about developing relationships. When I think about relationships in your business I think about it in three ways:

1. Your Customers- Your potential to sell a car or service is predicated on your ability to develop a relationship with a customer in one way or another. It may be in a one on one conversation in the middle of the showroom floor, through Twitter, Facebook or your advertising message. But until you can create a relationship with them you will not attract them to do business with you.

2. Your Vendors- You also have to develop a positive relationship with your vendors. You receive better service and a better price when you can relay what your needs are to your vendors. For the most part this has to be done one on one or through whatever means you communicate with them. It may be email, it may be a phone conversation, but until you communicate your needs it will be very difficult to take full advantage of their products and services.

3. Your Team-You have to have a strong relationship with your team. This is the most important of the three relationships. If you don’t have this you will never be successful at developing the other two.

Having a relationship with your team doesn’t mean you play golf every weekend with the ones you like. It means communicating often and in many cases one on one and as frequently as possible. Relationship with staff members are solidified by honesty and forthrightness. Until everyone on your team believes in you and gets on the same page it’s impossible to build successful relationships with your customers and vendors. The economy will give you perceived spurts of success, but achieving long term goals will never happen until you solidify the "team relationship."

So, you might be reading this and thinking, oh hogwash, you don’t have the time to bother building relationships with these people. Your real concern is just to make a profit and you can’t be bothered. What you have to realize is there is a direct relationship between developing relationships and developing a bottom line. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs