Staying Close to the People We Serve
When we developed an international strategy, I made an agreement with my boss about the relationships we would forge, We agreed that the people we choose to work with would be partners bi o matter their role, no matter their location around the world. It involved three basic points.
- People at our own company would call the people we worked with “partners,” not vendors, not licensees, not other clients, customers, or any other.
- We would adjust our process to meet theirs as well and as often as we could.
- I would visit their companies at least as often as they visited ours.
Could we have completed our business by not doing any or all of the three? Most certainly we might have. Information can be shared without being in the same room. We all know that so well.
However, by keeping to these three “rules of conduct,” our company became the first partner of choice. We enjoyed special access to content, and special access to files — we participated in decisions that lowered everyone’s costs and made the work more fun in the process.
True relationships formed around and through the work. Those relationships and the access they afforded us, allowed us to save $1000s and to be involved in the process of our partnered product launch. And those people talked about how easy our business was to do business with us. Soon we had partners in more countries than ever.
Companies are buildings with people inside.
We keep saying people like to do business with people.
What’s your story that shows how knowing the people raised the prize?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
