You first response to the title of this post should really be, "yeah, right!" There's no such thing as an honest and enduring business that ignores relationships. It doesn't matter if those relationships are with customers, vendors, employees or critics.The key to success with our ever-more-transparent business and personal lives is to build trust the same way we do with friends. (incidentally, the picture here is of my long-time trusted friend, Mr. T., in the gray shirt and me)
So, the new business strategy is not to target a particular segment and "sell" them your products or services, but to earn the trust of the folks you want to attract and make it easy for them to come to you. As I heard this past week at SoTeC, the idea is for you to be the bulls-eye, not the targeting arrow. Your audience are now using the arrows.
What Do You Think?
Do you think in our world of transparency, a result of the prevalence of social media, we can avoid building relationships to have long-lasting, successful businesses?