by Todd Jenney
We need relationships in order to win. Teams are built around the development of relationships, whether it be our personal team (family), or our professional team (work). Internal and external relationships help us parlay our knowledge and create exponential opportunity. Many times, building true and sincere relationships outside our core sphere of influence can be challenging. Gaining support from people outside our organizations, requires building relationships in which people know and trust us, as well as respect us. Likewise, we must trust and respect them.
Trust is the key to relationships, but in this era of fast-paced transaction business, how can business owners, and those who provide services for their businesses, create relationships based upon trust and respect?
With any Google search related to relationship building, you will gain a myriad of links to training and articles for personal relationship building. One such site, Training Magazine, provided 8 wonderful tips that begin with accept and celebrate differences, addresses learn to give and take feedback, and ends with develop empathy. The difficulty is in applying these types of solid tips into business structures. We believe this can be accomplished targeted business meetings augmented with “reunion-type” retreat interactions.
Just as with truly personal and family interactions, our relationships give meaning and richness to our lives. Part of human DNA is being associated with a community. And, since we spend a great deal of our awakened hours in a work environment, we should focus on how to create a work community that mimics the best parts of our family community. This includes learning, mindfulness and open communication – all which create trust and mutual respect.
In business, each side of any business deal wants to “win”. The cliché “win-win” is something that in reality, rarely happens. In almost all negotiations, one party emerges as the winner, and the other, while maybe not technically a loser, comes up short. There are exceptions, but a true win-win requires hard work, dedicated players and sometimes thinking about business differently.
During my tenure as CEO of Huck’s, a Midwest chain of convenience and retail petroleum outlets, we took a different approach to building relationships. For years and in most negotiations, we felt we had been getting the short end of the stick. We believed it was due to our size, the channel in which we operated or our geographic location. Whatever the reason, we determined we needed a drastic adjustment to be more competitive.
After additional internal reflections to identify needed adjustments, we also realized we had, a fledgling charity. We were a strong advocate for children and children’s needs, but our ability to provide the monetary support for children’s programs in our community was not occurring. Like
many retailers, we raised money each year through a golf outing and a few other store-specific events, but the money raised was nothing spectacular.
To tackle both issues, we created a new tier system for suppliers to participate in the charity, a system based upon principles of family reunions, trust, mutual respect, very open communication (including relative to confidential data) as well as access to key management.
Almost immediately, the company sales and bottom line began hitting record numbers. Participating suppliers also began seeing incredible sales growth with the retailer.
And what about the charity? Due to the supplier program, and a renewed focus on the beneficiary children, the charity grew from helping a few hundred children each year to helping thousands of children. The company became known across their marketing area as a truly compassionate company, doing anything to help a child in need.
A previously antagonistic, win/lose relationship turned into a family-oriented partnership, and everyone involved came away as winners. Trust and mutual respect, the foundation of any worthwhile and long-lasting human relationship, were fostered via the program we created. To this day, the relationships continue, long-after my retirement from Huck’s.
Great relationships allow us to win in business and in life!
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