In my previous blog post (Growing Talent Development Firms: Who Is Really Your Customer?), I discussed the matter of determining just who your customers are. Now, let's explore what it takes to truly partner with them.

Everyone wants to partner. It wasn’t too long ago when the new industry buzzword was “collaboration,” and many program offerings on how to best collaborate started appearing. The truth of the matter, however, is this was just another word to describe what businesses have been trying to do for many years; they just called it building relationships, or partnering, or win-win negotiating.

Unfortunately, experience indicates a huge assumption takes place at the initial time of the relationship formation that everyone involved will partner for the benefit of each other. All too often what is unsaid ends up becoming unmeasured expectations that frequently aren’t met. In other words, it is much easier to simply say we will collaborate in a win-win partnership than to actually describe what this looks like in detail.

However, if we endeavor to attach some specific desired outcomes to the relationship at its outset, we can often avoid the potential disappointment for not achieving what both parties wanted in the first place. To do this, two questions must be addressed: What exactly does each party want to achieve from the relationship? And how will these outcomes be measured?

To build better relationships, it is clear both parties must understand their mutual interests and needs, link them to their respective business results, develop a meaningful execution plan, and flawlessly execute the plan. Executing the plan effectively entails all relationships working together:

• those between the supplier as a whole and the customer

• those between the supplier’s employees and the customer’s customers

• those between the customer’s customer and all the supplier’s distribution channels

• those between the employees of both supplier and the customer.

Each of these relationships will dictate different, albeit related, desired outcomes. How is this accomplished? Basically, through three practices.

First, align your employees’ behavior with how you want your business to be perceived in the marketplace, essentially manifested through your brand promise. Second, deliver on your value proposition, which describes what your customer will obtain in exchange for their time, money, and effort. And third, ensure your employees are thoroughly engaged in your business so they can more closely represent your brand promise and value proposition through how they interact with your customers.

The following is a simple, easy to understand and practice model. It may help ensure that effective collaboration through win-win partnering not only initially takes hold, but is sustainable over the long haul. It describes how both parties must leverage their two-way relationship. This flips the typical WIIFM (What’s in It for Me) paradigm to the mutually beneficial WIIFU (What’s in It for Us) approach. The ABCs of partnering are:

A = Accelerate Advantage: Both parties need to fully understand how the other competes effectively in its respective market and strive to provide services facilitating their respective competitive advantage.

B = Build Capacity: Both parties need to be committed to building each others’ capability to serve one another, as well as their respective customers. By aiding each other in this way, each is further strengthened to continue building its business.

C = Create Value: Both parties need to understand the value they bring to their mutual relationship in its most minute detail and continually strive to assist each other in manifesting this value over time.

I don’t mean to simplify the intricacies of building effective partnerships by reducing it to just three practices. Anyone in any business knows executing such an approach is easier said than done. But starting with this approach and then defining what each A, B, and C really mean for the parties is one way to establish a long-term productive partnership.

Have you considered what your competitive advantage, capacity, and value proposition are? Have you communicated these to your customers? Have you thought about how your customers could help you achieve each? More importantly, have you considered how you can assist your customers in achieving theirs? How would you go about measuring the successful achievement of each?

For more insight, check out my book The Complete Guide to Building and Growing a Talent Development Firm.