Key Stakeholders Relationships in Salesforce

In today’s fast-paced business environment, building trusted relationships and influencing others are key to achieving success. This blog explores essential strategies and styles for fostering collaboration and driving positive outcomes. Readers will gain insights into:

• Understand how trust drives various business values.
• Learn about assessing trust through employee satisfaction surveys.
• Discover strategies for creating personal connections and transparency.
• Explore different ways to influence others, from collaborative to inspiring.

Let’s get started!

Develop Trusted Relationships

Trust contributes to many business values. Trust can drive teamwork, collaboration, employee engagement, productivity, learning and development, innovation, risk-taking, customer loyalty, retention, and profit growth.

Companies can evaluate how well they are trusted by conducting employee satisfaction surveys that ask questions about:

• Vision and strategy
• Communication and transparency
• Frequency with which team members ask each other for help
• Openness of leaders to ideas and suggestions
• How well leaders admit mistakes
• Confidence in senior leadership

Companies want to make sure they are building trust, and they can do that by creating a personal connection, being transparent and truthful, acting on feedback the company gathers, owning up to mistakes, and being consistent.

Influence Others

Collaborative:

• Do you ask questions to understand the other person’s needs?
• Do you focus on shared goals?
• Do you work with others to find solutions for the combined team?

Assertive:

• Do you use authority to state your opinion?
• Do you stand up for yourself and defend what you believe is right?
• Do you make sure your ideas are heard?

Analytical:

• Do you use logic and facts to reason?
• Do you use your expertise to persuade others?
• Do you present pros and cons?

Accommodating:

• Do you make tradeoffs to reach an outcome?
• Do you look for a middle ground?

Inspiring:

• Do you tell compelling stories?
• Do you communicate with enthusiasm and optimism?

Selecting the Best Influencing Style

Collaborative:

Use when you want input from others, when you need alignment and support, and when you need a joint solution that meets all parties’ needs.

Assertive:

Use when decisive action is needed, when you know you are right, and when an unpopular course of action needs to be deployed.

Analytical:

Use when you have information and facts, when there are risks to taking wrong actions, and when there is a clear direction.

Accommodating:

Use when you need a decision that’s viewed as fair when you need to maintain a strong relationship, and when compromising won’t have significant consequences.

Inspiring:

Use when you need to get others excited, you want to make an emotional connection, or gain buy-in and engagement. 

When you are ready to put this all together, you are going to want to consider:

• Performance goals
• Situation
• Stakeholders
• Company Culture
• Influencing style(s) to use

Use Case

The business analyst is working with a cross-functional team and wants to build a trusted relationship amongst the members to ensure successful project delivery. 

Which influencing style can help the business analyst in getting the work done?

Solution: Collaborative

Reason: The collaborative style of influencing can help build trust and support among team members. When members collaborate, they feel a sense of belonging; it also promotes openness.

Building Skilled Relationships with Empathy

Respond to People With Empathy

The key to building skilled relationships is to respond to people with empathy. Empathy is the ability to recognize and comprehend the feelings of others and to actively care about their Problems. 

Sympathy and Empathy are not the same. Sympathy does include emotion, but it is relevant to making judgments about the person. Empathy recognizes the other person’s emotions and communicates this back to them without any judgment.

Build Skilled Relationships

It is essential to practice self-awareness, self-management, and empathy in order to cultivate the kind of relationships that we refer to as skilled relationships. A skilled relationship develops trust, inspires others and collaborates to solve problems over time as we practice. One of the first things you might notice is that your coworkers have various perspectives on work, work styles, and other characteristics. It is best to come up with a team agreement so that everyone can reach their full potential. Due to the diversity of each team, each agreement is unique. You create a work environment that allows for the following with the agreement:

• Working as a team
• Trusting each other
• Allowing oneself to make mistakes and learn
• Appreciating diversity of opinion
• Being willing to take on new roles and tasks

Guidelines to Develop Skilled Relationships

• Accept and celebrate a diverse workplace
• Develop active listening skills
• Expand other communication skills
• Take time to support those you lead
• Manage technology and anticipate its impact
• Share your wisdom and invite the wisdom of others
• Develop honesty and truth

Wrapping Up

In wrapping up, the essence of cultivating trusted relationships and wielding influence in the workplace cannot be overstated. Through understanding the dynamics of trust, embracing various influencing styles, and responding with empathy, professionals can unlock new levels of collaboration and success. These skills are not just beneficial but essential in navigating the complexities of modern business environments.

For those looking to deepen their understanding and application of Salesforce, saasguru offers a unique opportunity. By joining our community on Slack, you’ll connect with like-minded professionals and experts who share your passion for growth and excellence. 

Furthermore, our online Salesforce bootcamps provide hands-on training and real-world project experience, ensuring you not only learn but also apply your knowledge in practical scenarios. This is more than just training; it’s about becoming part of a community that values learning, sharing, and succeeding together. 

Whether you’re looking to enhance your influencing skills, build empathetic relationships, or master Salesforce, saasguru is your gateway to achieving these goals.