Building and Maintaining Strategic Relationships in Business.
In today’s world, the competitiveness that exists amongst businesses has made the relevance of strategic relationships unavoidable. Established businesses all over the world understands the power of strategic relationships in navigating technological changes, market disruptions and shifting consumer demand. In order to achieve success in business there is a need to identify and maintain strategic relationships with suppliers, competitors, and stakeholders for collaboration in adapting to changes in business environment on a consistent basis.
On the other hand, most entrepreneurs in their earlier stage often struggle with identifying the right suppliers, customers, and partners to establish relationship that is instrumental in achieving their business goals and objectives. This gap when left unattended can slow down business growth, compromised service delivery, disruption in business operations and in some cases eventual failure of business. This article seeks to give more insights to this gap thereby helping entrepreneurs make worthwhile decisions regarding strategic relationship relevant to business growth and consistency in value creation.
Steps to Building and Maintaining Strategic Relationships
a. Carryout thorough research to identify potential partners.
Entrepreneurs, business owners and managers can identify potential partners by
asking questions that focuses on strategic alignment, capabilities and resources,
market position, culture fit, financial performance amongst others. Here are few
questions to ask when identifying potential partners.
- What are the core values of the identified partner?
- What are the strengths and core competencies of the identified partner?
- Does these strengths and core competencies of the identified partner
align with our standard for value? - What is the market share of the identified partner?
- How does the identified partner handle innovation and change within its
organisation? - What is the culture within the organisation of the identified partner?
- How does the identified partner handle conflict of interest?
- How financially stable is the identified partner?
- What are the most preferred communication channels and styles of the
identified partner? - Are there any legal issues regarding compliance by the identified partner? These questions give more insight to the compatibility of the identified partner in aid
business success.
b. Building trust and resolve conflict promptly.
After the potential partner has been identified and chosen by an entrepreneur,
business owners or managers, commitment need to be made in building trust and transparency. Both parties (the entrepreneur and partner) must endeavour to be open and honest in communication as this will help avoid ambiguity and shed light on grey areas. Furthermore, there is a need to ensure that the relationship is beneficial to both parties (i.e. adopting a win-win approach). A safe way of achieving this is for both parties to leverage on their strengths to achieving objective or goals they will be unable to achieve separately. More also, conflict management and resolution must be addressed with utmost importance as appropriate measure should be in place to promptly address any advent of variance in interest.
c. Expand network using existing relationships.
Entrepreneurs, business owners and managers can leverage the existing relationship they have with partners to increase their contacts and networks for more feasibility and collaborations. An effective way of achieving this is through introduction to new contact by partners, attending seminars, forums, events, conferences amongst others.
Conclusion
It is important for entrepreneurs, business owners and managers to have a clear picture of what they intend to achieve with every existing or potential partnerships. This is important and holds relevance to the overall success of the business in the short, medium, or long term. In other words, building and managing strategic relationships is a consistent effort and deliberate commitment by parties involved for organisational growth and overall success.