Using business skills in your relationship can help keep things connected. Unfortunately, successful business practices can also wreak havoc in an intimate relationship. If you spot these four skills in your relationship, steer clear:
1. Creating a need
Good marketers and sales people provide customers with a product or service that satisfies a true need. Unscrupulous businessmen create a false need to satisfy if there isn't a genuine one to tackle. Shifty spouses can do the same. They will create an imaginary deficit within you or within the relationship to fill to make themselves needed.
The way to spot a partner who is creating a need is to check how you feel with and without them. If you feel abundantly happy with them and depressingly deficient without them, your partner could be creating that deficient feeling. If you feel deficient with them and abundant without them, their efforts may be backfiring and your intuition could be telling you this isn't the match for you.
2. Creating a sense of urgency
"Act now!" "Only 10 left!" "You'll never see these prices again!" We've all seen the signs and heard the calls. And many of us have fallen for the ruse. But fortunately or unfortunately, this strategy works. A time-tested way to close deals and make sales is actually using time against customers. Pushing up the timeline to force a decision and limiting the amount of research and comparison that can be done can help you make the sale.
Sniff out these romance scammers by their stories. Don't get sucked in with the suave serial dater who is being chased by many potential suitors. If you don't step up now, you'll lose your chance! Don't fall for the false sense of urgency.
3. Creating a sense of uniqueness
Intrinsic value is created when a product or service meets the customers' needs effectively. But some business-minded partners will try to spawn value by spinning a tale of uniqueness. "Rare find" and "One of a kind" becomes "You'll never find someone like me" and "I'm a rare breed." If your man tries to get you by convincing you there no one else out there for you, run in the other direction.
4. Creating an emotion
The first rule of sales is: Don't sell the specs, sell the feeling. This means selling the emotion, or better yet selling the dream. Bad business and boyfriends alike gloss over the reality of what you're getting and how much it costs in lieu of promises of paradise. But you'll likely be left with broken dreams and a big bill if you fall for this trap!
Making a relationship work with a great salesman can be a double-edged sword. He'll be able to provide for you financially but may take advantage of you emotionally. Good business requires getting into the mind of the "customer" and working the angles that serve the needs of the business. A good boyfriend will use these skills to serve your needs and the needs of the relationship, instead of trying to get ahead.
