A nice interview, well caring definitely gives you some reward and for long term success it is surely a good advice. Building strong and trust worthy terms will get you up with your desired expectation most probably.

- J.
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It depends more on the market you’re servicing than anything else. And some markets are more interested in your authority and expertise than in your friendship.

If you call in a plumber, no matter how likable the guy might be, if he doesn’t know what he’s doing you won’t call him back.

On the other hand you could have the most arrogant plumber in the world turn up who diagnoses the problem in 30 seconds flat and fixes the problem in no time at all.

You might hate the guy with a passion, but you know that he’s the best at what he does so you will continue to use his services.

DuPont didn’t become what it is today because of relationships. It did that because no one else could produce a gas that worked so effectively on the battle field. Henry Ford was a Nazi sympathizer yet at the same time he was also the absolute authority on mass production line methods. He was not a nice man though. His success was borne from his authority.

So while as a marketer I totally agree that relationships are vitally important to your success either online or off, I also believe that nothing is more important than the amount of authority you bring with you.

Having spent many years in IT I often saw people who didn’t understand why I could get away with being loud, rude at times, and somewhat inflexible while at the same time they would lose contracts or jobs even though every one in the company loved them.

The bottom line is that I may not have been the most liked person in the company, but if you needed a problem fixed, an answer to a question, or an emergency responded to in the middle of the night people knew that I was the only choice.

My authority and expertise was never held in second place to a good personality.

No doubt this approach has its limit but it’s an example of the limitations of relationships and how authority can do far more for you than relationships ever will.

And I do expect that some people might object or disagree with me and that’s okay but before you do I would just like you to first ask yourself this:

Would I prefer to have a great friend who has no clue of what he’s talking about, or an associate who may be very coarse and perhaps even obnoxious, but knows everything there is to know about the subject I want to learn about or the problem I want solved.

For me, I’ll take the crank pot who has all the answers over the friend who doesn’t really know or fix anything.
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