When you tell entrepreneurs that relationships are the key to developing a personal and professional network, they often smile and acknowledge the concept without fully appreciating it. Let me put this notion into perspective.

Imagine you're standing in a large room full of people, and I ask everyone to pull out their key rings. Visualize everyone holding up the keys to their house, their office and their car as I ask everyone to show them to the room.

Now here’s my question: Would you hand over your car keys to a perfect stranger? What about those to your office or home? Of course not!

Now instead of a key to a car or a home, imagine you have a key that opens the door to an important relationship with a colleague that another person would like to connect with. Let’s say you hold the key to this relationship, but you don’t know the person who's asking for it. Would you give it to them? Of course not! Why? Because when you give a referral, you give away a piece of your reputation. If it's a good referral, it helps your reputation; if it's a bad referral, it hurts. Intuitively, you'll only hand over the keys to someone you know and trust.

What I love about this metaphor is how it works on two levels. First, you’re not going to hand over the keys to a relationship until you know a person well. But more important, others don’t even know what keys you actually have until you trust them enough to tell them.

It's not just you; nobody is willing to hand over the keys to important relationships until they know and trust the person asking. Unfortunately, when networking, some people expect perfect strangers to hand over the keys right away.

Take a look at your referral partners. Would it surprise you if they had keys to referrals they're keeping in their pockets until they trust you with them? It shouldn’t. So how do we begin this process of exchanging keys?

It all comes down to establishing credibility with your referral partners. I've seen many people who think networking is about meeting people and asking for business right then and there. That’s it. They meet someone and focus on telling them what they need or what kind of business they want. It’s like saying, “Hello, my name is Ivan. Let’s do business.”

Effective networking is about building relationships with others who can refer you once they've come to trust you, have confidence in you and feel loyal to you. This truly is the key to networking success. And this process takes time. This isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme.

If there were a single networking concept I had to identify that most entrepreneurs just don’t get, it would be building relationships over time. They listen, acknowledge its importance, then ask about the best way to close a deal when meeting someone for the first time. The short answer is, you don’t. OK, everyone has that one fluke story about meeting someone for the first time and ending up doing business, but that’s not the norm. The norm in successful networking is building a relationship to generate long-term referrals.

I think you'll be astonished at how powerful this concept is when put into action. Think of it this way: When you get to the place where you can, without hesitation, hand over your physical set of keys to someone, you'll be in the best place possible to begin asking for keys to their relationships.

当我像企业家们提及人际关系是建立个人和专业交际网的关键时，他们经常会微笑着附和，却未完全意识到。接下来让我用一个比喻来验证这个观点。

试想一下，我请房间里的每个人拿出他们的钥匙圈。他们听从我的指示举起他们房子，办公室和汽车的钥匙。

现在请回答我，你会把你的车钥匙交给一个完全陌生的人吗？办公室或者家里的钥匙？答案当然是不会！

那倘若现在你掌握的不是车或者家里的要是，而是掌握着能开启你的同事和他人关系的钥匙。也就是说，当一位你不认识的人想要通过你认识你的同事，你会答应吗？当然不！为什么？因为当你答应介绍的同时，也关系到你的个人声誉。如果你的介绍正确，可以帮助你提升威望，相反，则大大有损。所以理所当然的，你只会答应那些你认识并且信任的人。

我喜欢这个比喻的原因是它在两个不同的层面同样适用。首先，你不会将开启关系的钥匙交给一个陌生人的手上，更重要的是，在你告诉别人之前，他们甚至不知道你掌握了哪种钥匙。

不仅仅是你，没有人愿意随便将开启重要关系的钥匙交予他人除非对方是自己熟知和信任的。不幸的是，在人际交往时，有些人总是期望从陌生人处立即获得这把钥匙。

请看看你周围的朋友。倘若他们不帮你举荐直到他们信任你为止，你会感到惊讶吗？应该不会吧。所以我们如何开始交换开启人际关系的钥匙呢？

归根结底，这都在于建立彼此的信任度。我见过许多人认为人际交往仅仅是四处认识人和寻找业务。他们对着刚认识的人说出他们的需求和想做哪种生意。看上去就像在说：“你好，我的名字叫Ivan。我们一起做生意吧。”

有效的人际交往是和那些能介绍推荐你的人建立关系。在此之前，他们必须新任你，对你忠诚和有信心。这真的就是成功建立人际网络的关键。这个过程需要时间，并非一夜致富那么简单的。

我必须指出一项人际交往的原理，那就是随着时间慢慢建立人际关系，这也是许多企业家没有意识到的。他们倾听并且承认这个原则的重要性，接着依然询问我第一次遇到别人就跟对方达成一个意向的最好方法。答案是，不要！好吧，可能每个人都有过侥幸地和初次见面的人做成买卖，但是这绝不是典型。成功的人际交往典型是，建立长期的合作关系。

我坚信当你落实到行动时，你会因为这条原理的巨大作用而感到惊讶。