Everyone talks about how to improve personal relationships, but how about what about business relationships? Well, today we are talking about how to improve your business relations with 7 strategies!
- Suppliers & Manufacturers
- Contractors
- Professional Services
- Employees
- Business Partnerships
- Banking
- Mentoring
- Joint Ventures
- Investors
These Business Relationships are critical. Well, then, how are we going to make them great?
1. Anybody working with you needs to know what their clear instructions are
What is it you want them to do. Anybody that you have a relationship with within the business room, they each have a purpose. If you can’t match up a purpose with any of the nine relationships I gave you, then you don’t need them. When I bring on a bank, I share within my expectations of that relationship. If I can’t get lines of credit and loans to do projects fairly effortlessly, well, then they’re not helpful to me. They’re the wrong bank for me.
2. Provide needed resources for them to succeed
Employees, partners, there’s things that they expect of me. I need to provide resources such as enough money to fund a project and that we can fall back on so that we’re not living week-to-week and we’re all stressed out. Marketing, I provide needed resources for them to succeed. When my employees tell me we need updated software, new computers, more staff, I provide the needed resources for them to succeed.
3. Don’t bottle-neck everything
You want to make business relationships good? Don’t make them so confusing. Don’t make five of them have to intertwine to make a decision. My partners don’t need to go through my supplier, my contractor, and my mentor. Investeres don’t need to be involved in my partnerships. They don’t need to meet with my employees, etc.
4. Pay fast without any delays
The reason why I have great contractors that work for me is that when they finish, they get paid. If there’s a check to be chased on an account to be paid, it’s my job/our company’s job to get it. It’s not our contractors. And in construction, they’re in there an hour later. They expect to be paid, so if you’re slow to pay, you’re probably going to have less-than-quality business relationships. Good people will not stay with you in any of these roles. All the way down your suppliers, your manufacturers or contractors, professional services. They’re not going to be with you.
5. Fight fair and in private
You may have a knock down drag-out with everybody on this list at one time or another. I had it out with my bank or one time, an absolute knock-down drag out fight in 2008. I felt like I had to come to my bank with a mask and be somebody different. They treated me horrible, and I reminded them of that one day. I said, You are not an entrepreneur, Don’t you dare give me a speech when you sit behind a desk. And get a paycheck every week. Don’t tell me what I think what I should do, what I should know.
I went just off on it. Right? But we fought fair and we fought in private.
6. Know their value to your organization
If you don’t know it, you’re never going to appreciate it. You know their value so that you can appreciate what they bring to the table. If you don’t, you’re probably going to be far less patient with them and you’re going to go through too many of them too fast.
How easy it would be to replace them? If you have a supplier that it’s very limited in what you’re getting and trying to find another one would be really awful, well, there’s their value to your organization. It would be very hard to replace them. You need to know the value of the given relationship because if you know the value of it, you’re probably going to appreciate it.
7. Know how hard it is to replace them/Have someone on the bench that can step up
So you’re not a hostage. It’s harder and son than others, of course, but if every one of these you’re like a hostage, that’s a stressful way to do business.
