Some of the world’s most well-known organizations achieved success by leveraging relationship capital.
Business relationships offer many potential benefits beyond the obvious. All of which can help you gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. However, the key to capturing these benefits goes beyond simply recognizing their potential. It also requires the development of strategies for forging alliances that go beyond the traditional definition and understanding.
Why You Need to Cultivate Relationship Capital
The nature of most businesses today requires owners and managers to get creative in the cultivation of resources.
Unless your company has unlimited financial capacity – and sometimes even then – you must find ways to create competitive advantages. Strategic partners potentially have valuable assets you can cultivate to create synergy benefitting both sides.
You could leave things to chance and hope that your stakeholders will direct others to your doorstep or provide business-boosting assistance. But you’ll reap more benefits by identifying potential opportunities and pursuing them.
Relationship Capital & Strategic Partnerships
Relationship capital, based in the theories of social psychology, is the benefit an organization stands to gain through the development of strategic partnerships. The key to building relationship capital is establishing and maintaining a high level of trust with your strategic partners.
Strategic partners can be vendors and suppliers, third-party consultants, influencers or anyone with whom you share some type of relationship – or aspire to. You can also develop strategic partnerships with your customers, your competitors, or members of the community.
The type of relationship you develop with each of these potential strategic partners will depend on the nature of your business. But, no matter what the nature of the relationship may be, it offers the potential for helping your business thrive.
Identifying Opportunities
In one classic example, computer giant Dell gained an early advantage by leveraging a key supplier’s market research to improve its product design. With an improved product line, Dell increased its sales and the supplier received more orders accordingly.
In your business, you can identify potential opportunities in a variety of ways. This could be as simple as leveraging a good relationship with a customer or supplier by asking for referrals. You could work with a trusted partner to outsource some aspect of your operation or work out a trade arrangement with a complementary business.
You can also develop strategic partnerships with vendors who can help you improve your business in some way.
At GUIDEcx, we value our client relationships. We specialize in the customer onboarding process to help you improve your relationship with your clients. This helps you reduce churn while minimizing costs and improving your bottom line.
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