Most of us have spent a lot of time attending trade shows, dinner appointments, and customer site visits. We know how valuable these relationships are and how difficult they are to acquire and build. We typically spend more money building relationships than anything else. In the end we believe this investment will pay off in the long run.

Achieving an ROI with relationships requires long-term investments because timing is everything (especially in the technology business). This has never been easier thanks to LinkedIn’s self-healing contact directory. We no longer have to keep track of where our relationships work or what their current title is. Our only responsibility now is to maintain contact and gain mind-share.

This is easier said than done. Thanks to the world’s information overload, we have gone from a small selection of content options to the Las Vegas buffet of options. Our prospects are much more selective about what they consume and if they don’t like it, it’s very likely they will walk away from your content and revisit the buffet. By the time you come out with your next piece of content, they will likely be too full to even consider it.

Overcoming content coma requires a new recipe known as relativity. There is a direct correlation between the size of your target audience and their willingness to consume your content. The key to relevant content can be summarized in two words: Customers’ customers. If you know your target audience well enough to speak to them about their own customers, you’re on the right track.

If you’re timing isn’t right, your content will be either under cooked or over cooked. Content plus timing is truly the magic recipe for capitalizing on your greatest asset (relationships). The best trigger events to look for include: venture capital, mergers, new executives, office moves, DNS changes, growth, news, and product launches. Keeping track of these events can be challenging, but there is a new technology to make this simple and easy.

Ensable has invested nearly a decade developing sophisticated listeners (SARA) to identify these events in real-time through electronic smoke signals. The purpose of Ensable is to help you know where to focus your time based on events, so you can create relevant content when the timing is right.