When you tell entrepreneurs that relationships are the key to developing a personal and professional network, they often smile and acknowledge the concept without fully appreciating it. Let me put this notion into perspective.

    Imagine you're standing in a large room full of people, and I ask everyone to pull out their key rings. Visualize everyone holding up the keys to their house, their office and their car as I ask everyone to show them to the room.

    Now here’s my question: Would you hand over your car keys to a perfect stranger? What about those to your office or home? Of course not!

    Now instead of a key to a car or a home, imagine you have a key that opens the door to an important relationship with a colleague that another person would like to connect with. Let’s say you hold the key to this relationship, but you don’t know the person who's asking for it. Would you give it to them? Of course not! Why? Because when you give a referral, you give away a piece of your reputation. If it's a good referral, it helps your reputation; if it's a bad referral, it hurts. Intuitively, you'll only hand over the keys to someone you know and trust.

    What I love about this metaphor is how it works on two levels. First, you’re not going to hand over the keys to a relationship until you know a person well. But more important, others don’t even know what keys you actually have until you trust them enough to tell them.

    It's not just you; nobody is willing to hand over the keys to important relationships until they know and trust the person asking. Unfortunately, when networking, some people expect perfect strangers to hand over the keys right away.

    Take a look at your referral partners. Would it surprise you if they had keys to referrals they're keeping in their pockets until they trust you with them? It shouldn’t. So how do we begin this process of exchanging keys?

    It all comes down to establishing credibility with your referral partners. I've seen many people who think networking is about meeting people and asking for business right then and there. That’s it. They meet someone and focus on telling them what they need or what kind of business they want. It’s like saying, “Hello, my name is Ivan. Let’s do business.”

    Effective networking is about building relationships with others who can refer you once they've come to trust you, have confidence in you and feel loyal to you. This truly is the key to networking success. And this process takes time. This isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme.

    If there were a single networking concept I had to identify that most entrepreneurs just don’t get, it would be building relationships over time. They listen, acknowledge its importance, then ask about the best way to close a deal when meeting someone for the first time. The short answer is, you don’t. OK, everyone has that one fluke story about meeting someone for the first time and ending up doing business, but that’s not the norm. The norm in successful networking is building a relationship to generate long-term referrals.

    I think you'll be astonished at how powerful this concept is when put into action. Think of it this way: When you get to the place where you can, without hesitation, hand over your physical set of keys to someone, you'll be in the best place possible to begin asking for keys to their relationships.

    當我像企業家們提及人際關系是建立個人和專業交際網的關鍵時，他們經常會微笑著附和，卻未完全意識到。接下來讓我用一個比喻來驗證這個觀點。

    試想一下，我請房間里的每個人拿出他們的鑰匙圈。他們聽從我的指示舉起他們房子，辦公室和汽車的鑰匙。

    現在請回答我，你會把你的車鑰匙交給一個完全陌生的人嗎？辦公室或者家里的鑰匙？答案當然是不會！

    那倘若現在你掌握的不是車或者家里的要是，而是掌握著能開啟你的同事和他人關系的鑰匙。也就是說，當一位你不認識的人想要通過你認識你的同事，你會答應嗎？當然不！為什么？因為當你答應介紹的同時，也關系到你的個人聲譽。如果你的介紹正確，可以幫助你提升威望，相反，則大大有損。所以理所當然的，你只會答應那些你認識并且信任的人。

    我喜歡這個比喻的原因是它在兩個不同的層面同樣適用。首先，你不會將開啟關系的鑰匙交給一個陌生人的手上，更重要的是，在你告訴別人之前，他們甚至不知道你掌握了哪種鑰匙。

    不僅僅是你，沒有人愿意隨便將開啟重要關系的鑰匙交予他人除非對方是自己熟知和信任的。不幸的是，在人際交往時，有些人總是期望從陌生人處立即獲得這把鑰匙。

    請看看你周圍的朋友。倘若他們不幫你舉薦直到他們信任你為止，你會感到驚訝嗎？應該不會吧。所以我們如何開始交換開啟人際關系的鑰匙呢？

    歸根結底，這都在于建立彼此的信任度。我見過許多人認為人際交往僅僅是四處認識人和尋找業務。他們對著剛認識的人說出他們的需求和想做哪種生意�？瓷先ゾ拖裨谡f：“你好，我的名字叫Ivan。我們一起做生意吧。”

    有效的人際交往是和那些能介紹推薦你的人建立關系。在此之前，他們必須新任你，對你忠誠和有信心。這真的就是成功建立人際網絡的關鍵。這個過程需要時間，并非一夜致富那么簡單的。

    我必須指出一項人際交往的原理，那就是隨著時間慢慢建立人際關系，這也是許多企業家沒有意識到的。他們傾聽并且承認這個原則的重要性，接著依然詢問我第一次遇到別人就跟對方達成一個意向的最好方法。答案是，不要！好吧，可能每個人都有過僥幸地和初次見面的人做成買賣，但是這絕不是典型。成功的人際交往典型是，建立長期的合作關系。

    我堅信當你落實到行動時，你會因為這條原理的巨大作用而感到驚訝。