Modern Day Business Partnerships
The business world is and has always been known for its cutthroat practices. Relations with vendors, partners, and even customers are often turned into a game of power, in which both sides attempt to extract the maximum benefits from their respective partner while simultaneously contributing as little as possible to the relationship. As with more aspects of doing business in today’s world, this approach to handling professional relations needs to be altered in order to better fit into the requirements of the current environment.
Vendor relationships need to be transformed into a trust-based partnership, from which both sides benefit equally. This can only be achieved through a mutual goal alignment and unreserved information exchange. Complete transparency and honesty need to characterize the relationship if this approach is to succeed.
An attempt to turn this into reality however is often met with suspicion and doubt from the other side. As a result of the long-running established business practices companies have learned to always expect stiff resistance from their partners and tend to look for an ulterior motive if their expectations are not met.
We have experienced this multiple times with our partners and customers, who often find it hard to believe that such a degree of upfront and unbiased honesty is possible in a business relationship. Once they have been convinced of it however, the benefits begin to display themselves. Having “true partners” in your business is not only vital to the success of the modern organization but can also make life easier for its managers.
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