articles > Building Strategic Relationships
Co-Destiny: Overcome Growth Challenges—Yours and Your Customers
So, do your training teams and their business consultants know how to solve a service paradox? If not, they will not be successful with their bottom line, or their clients—not a smart move in this time of corporate and consumer financial conservatism. Business consultants and global strategy experts Atlee Valentine Pope and George F. Brown, Read the rest…
Troubled Waters
In today’s business environment, where every firm has to focus intensely on the ways in which they can achieve a cost structure that is acceptable to their own customers, tremendous strains can emerge between suppliers and customers, even ones that have had a long history of shared successes. It takes a significant effort on the Read the rest…
Taking Action to Sustain Customer Relationships
Strong customer relationships can yield rewards for both of the companies involved. Learn more in this article.. Most companies invest a significant level of resources in activities designed to identify business partners and secure a relationship with them. Sales leaders typically identify the strategic targets that they want to win over in each year’s annual Read the rest…
Who Would Ever Share Customers?
Many organizations live in fear of the notion of sharing end customers. After all, a manufacturer might try to swoop in and sell directly, cutting out the distributor. And a distributor always can bring in new manufacturers to supply products. But if both parties learn which relationships are serviced best by which type of organization, Read the rest…
Atlee Valentine Pope on Choosing Customers Wisely
How to move forward in the new year by learning from avoidable mistakes As we begin to climb slowly out of the deepest, darkest recession on recent record, it’s normal to want to simply get up, wipe the dirt off our knees and move blithely ahead. For the most part, this is a common reaction Read the rest…
Opinion: Can This Marriage Be Saved?
This Opinion piece appears in the Aug. 1 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today. It takes a significant effort on the part of suppliers and customers alike to ensure that strains on key supplier-customer relationships are avoided, and there is a common focus on the contributions that create value. The logistics industry Read the rest…
Be A Good Customer–And Let Your Suppliers Help You Grow
Most firms have learned that their customers can be a valuable source of insight, providing ideas as to how they can create and capture value. Fewer firms, however, have learned that similar contributions can come from their suppliers. In today’s challenging business environment, tapping every available source of information can be a factor that sets top-performing firms Read the rest…
Avoiding Distress in Key Business Relationships
It takes a significant effort on the part of supplier companies as well as their customers to ensure that strains on key supplier-customer relationships are avoided, and that there is a common focus on each one’s value-creating contributions. If your firm is involved in a “CoDestiny” relationship — one that has yielded value through shared Read the rest…
