Business relationships play vital roles in every successful business. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small one or a large company. Businesses take great importance to the progress and maintenance of these vital relationships for the assurance of a smooth business process. They are important for your business growth and success.
A strong business relationship can encourage customer awareness and retention as well as connectivity to other businesses.
For starting businesses, it is important that you focus on building strong and long-lasting relationships. These business relationships take time and effort to be created. They do not just happen with just a click of the finger.
What are business relationships?
In general, a business relationship refers to the connections of all existing parties that is involved in the business. This could be an employee to employee connections, leaders to members, or business to clients. All of these have impacts on the business process itself.
Business tycoons say that the key to business success is winning and keeping your people and customers. And the way to do that is through relationships.
It is impossible to separate business relationships from the business. Of course, it is hard to start the business process without the employees and clients.
There are three types of business relationships.
- Business to Business (B2B) – a business offers its products or services directly to other businesses. This is a matter of mutual gain. For instance, a manufacturer of bike parts which sells their products to bike stores instead of individual bike riders.
- Business to Consumer (B2C) – a business that offers products or services directly to consumers. Restaurants and fast foods are examples of this. Social media and technology make it easy for B2C online stores to reach individual consumers.
- Internal Relationships – everyone in the business has relationships with each other. People skills and relationship management is vital in a business. For small and medium enterprise-owners, it is important to always check the radar of employees’ happiness and health of relationships internally.
When running a business, your business network should be composed of selective people that you can tap on and rely for support. Many people do not ask for help when they really need it, and that can be fatal for small and medium enterprises.
DougDurie.com is a small enterprise that focuses on positive change within business leaders and management.
How to create a strong and long-lasting business relationship?
Running a small business can be frightening. But one of the main keys to its success is the ability to create (and build) relationships with others.
Here are some ways to build long-lasting business relationships.
- Be real and honest.
Dishonesty can ruin things at the starting point. This can ruin relationships and even affect your business reputation. This is important since this can affect future opportunities. So, make sure to show people who you are and accept them for who they are. Look for people and other businesses that you feel a connection. Your common beliefs and point of view can grow to a stronger relationship.
- Respect for each other.
It takes time for respect to be built. We first need to prove ourselves overtime and show great results. Building mutual respect is necessary for creating a strong business relationship. So be patient and take action.
- Articulate your shared goals and expectations.
We look for people that share similar goals and values. Make sure that your team members are all aware of your common goals. This also goes when you are working on the relationship with other businesses. Know their goals and share your goals. When eyeing for a long-term relationship, identify what are your shared goals and what are those that exist independently.
- Be creative.
Problems may occur in business from time to time. This is a challenge in relationship management. When you are building relationships with other businesses or customers, it can be difficult to proceed without damaging some bond.
Be creative when trying to solve conflicts and know when to compromise. An example of this is when there is a customer who is mad at one of your employees. Then upon questioning, you learn that it was the customer’s fault. In this situation, you may need to let go of the customer to maintain your internal relationship.
- Meet in person.
Making time to meet with business partners, clients and co-workers can build strong relationships. Calls and emails sometimes do not translate feelings well. If you can’t meet up, it is easy now to schedule a video call. It’s better to take advantage of modern technology to promote business relationships.
- Give more than you receive.
Contact people not only when you need them. If you want help from other people, you also need to help them. Reach out to people in your network on a regular basis. Take time to listen to your client. Take time to learn what the other’s business goals are. Ask them if you can help in any way. This strengthens your relationship and makes it mutually beneficial.
- Let Go of Expectations
Always start the relationship with an open mind and realistic expectations. We perceive people based only on our interactions with them.
- Focus on a long-term business relationship
You can start a new relationship in a day but it takes time to build a strong one. Strengthening relationships, building credibility and trust, and looking out for each other’s back are not made overnight. Remember that it takes years to build strong bonds but it can be destroyed in just a few minutes. So be consistent with dealing with clients and business partners. Focus on gaining credibility little by little in everything you do.
We see amazing benefits when our business relationships are strong. You can get new resources and venture into a new market. There are always risks in starting new business relationships. But there is also always the road for growth and success if you build a healthy business network.
Talk with us now, and start building healthy business relationships. Doug Durie would be very glad to help you craft your plans and put them into action.
