Fares to Friends : How to Develop Outstanding Business Relationships (2nd Edition)

Many business people instinctively possess natural people and relationship skills while others are more quantitative and analytical in their approach to the world. While these professionals are highly intelligent and technically skilled, they frequently lack the relational skills that come more easily to others. As a result, they struggle to reach their full business and career potential. Ed Wallace is that rare business person who while analytically savvy is also blessed with a natural talent for connecting with people to develop outstanding business relationships. In his first book, Ed shares essential relationship qualities and wisdom accumulated during his twenty-five year business career, and serves them up in a metaphorical framework that resonates with both "quant jocks" and "relational-types" alike. Using stories about the wisdom he learned from Max the Taxi Driver, Ed explains the essential qualities of Relational Capital and how this intangible asset can be created, developed, and used to amplify one's personal net worth in life and business. This book offers a wealth of good, solid business advice. “Fares to Friends” is the business professional's equivalent to best-seller “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom. Like Albom, Ed Wallace invites the reader to share in a series of literally and figuratively transporting conversations with his mentor, a cab driver named Max. Over the course of many trips to the airport, Max, a former business executive who gave up high-level commerce to become a service entrepreneur, points out what the author considers to be crucial guideposts on the road to business success: how to build relational capital. "Relational capital" is "the value created by people in a business relationship." "How people know and regard you is the most important element in any business relationship's path to success and to your own personal success," stresses Wallace. Credibility, integrity and authenticity, the three essential qualities of outstanding business relationships, converge to form relational capital. These qualities are expressed through sensitivity and attention to detail. Those who neglect the care-and-feeding of the human element in business do so at their peril. Building relational capital pays off in relational capital gains such as a dynamic increase in reserves of trust and good will, as well as long-term sustainable business relationships and friendships, Wallace says. In this book you’ll learn how quality relationships are satisfying, enriching and how and why they allow you to sleep at night. It's undeniable that such relationships — such friendships — inevitably lead to rewards of the more ordinary sort — the kind that help to pay the mortgage and send the kids to college. This book offers a wealth of good, solid business advice. "Fares to Friends" is the business professional's equivalent to best-seller "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom. Like Albom, Ed Wallace '81 VSB invites the reader to share in a series of literally and figuratively transporting conversations with his mentor, a cab driver named Max. Over the course of many trips to the airport, Max, a former business executive who gave up high-level commerce to become a service entrepreneur, points out what the author considers to be crucial guideposts on the road to business success: how to build relat Title from PDF title page (viewed on Jan. 31, 2008).