(Add to Favorites | View All Articles | Resource Directory)
|
|
|
Keep TRACK of your Business Relationships and Gain Profits
How do you know when an alliance needs to be monitored and tracked? More often than not, an alliance needs to be monitored and tracked. If you ignore your alliance partner at all, you will be losing ground and your business relationship will not be what you expect. If you ignore anyone, they tend to forget about you, or at least they will not take you seriously and will find other people to pass the time with. The same is true for an alliance partnership. You should remember to treat them just like a customer and always keep in touch. Any business relationship depends on how much you keep in touch and how much information you give them to keep the project alive. This does not mean that you have to commit to a great volume of communications but you do have to commit to a regular communication strategy that is a two-way commitment. You must also know what is happening with the alliance partner and how you can help to increase the amount of business they do on your behalf. The two-way street approach should be part of any alliance or partnership agreement you put in place. If you do not make any communication commitment, then the dialog or information will be sporadic and it will not provide you with a consistent update on the latest and greatest information. It is only with information that you will be able to take full advantage of the alliance. When you spend time monitoring and tracking an alliance, you will be fully prepared to step-in with help when needed. You will also be advised well in advance of any potential problems. Problems with an alliance can be many, but through clear and consistent communication, these can be held to a minimum and perhaps even solved before they become too large and threaten the relationship. Where Alliances Are a Problem How do you determine potential problems with an alliance? Alliances and partnerships will always have problems. Nothing ever goes as smoothly as it should. In other words, nothing is easy, it must be nurtured and any possible problem dealt with before it ruins the relationship. So what can go wrong with an alliance? First, the alliance partner may not have enough focus on doing well with your product or service. They may want to sell more of another company's products before they deal with yours. This can be solved by keeping them informed and educated about what they get out of the alliance with you. Second, an alliance partner may not gain enough sales to retain the partnership. You have a choice as to whether they should be dropped and replaced or to work with them to increase the sales. If you think about it, it is less costly to place a current alliance into a training and supporting position than to try and find a new alliance partner. Lastly, an alliance may have changes in personnel, and the new faces may not believe in your product line (they may want to sell a competitor's line as their favorite). In this case, the business relationship will need to be rescued through additional communication efforts. Any number of other problems may arise with an alliance but the three mentioned are the most common to the partnerships I have created with my company. I often do surveys of my channel partners to judge any lapses of interest. I also look at the number of product returns from any partner. This is usually an indication of product substitution with another line and also an indicator of a change in focus. You will need to determine your own minimum standards for an alliance and draw that line in the sand for a starting point. Bette Daoust, Ph.D. has been networking with others since leaving high school years ago. Realizing that no one really cared about what she did in life unless she had someone to tell and excite. She decided to find the best ways to get people's attention, be creative in how she presented herself and products, getting people to know who she was, and being visible all the time. Her friends and colleagues have often dubbed her the "Networking Queen". Blueprint for Networking Success: 150 ways to promote yourself is the first in this series. Blueprint for Branding Yourself: Another 150 ways to promote yourself is planned for release in 2005. For more information visit http://www.BlueprintBooks.com
MORE RESOURCES: News provided by Yahoo! News and Google News Mayor makes another vow to cut small-biz red tape - Crain's New York Business (blog) Epson Offers Five Ways to Reinvigorate Your Small Business Small Business Column: Time for Irish SMEs to take advantage Small Business Economy Continues To Grow Modestly Lt. Governor on pro-business legislation: 'We're on the cusp of changing our ... - Albuquerque Business First Fla. lawmakers propose small biz sales tax holiday - First Coast News Decline of small business hurts recovery, jobs growth |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How to Effectively Design Your Business Image In many industries, image is one of the last things business owner looks at. If business is not booming, they assume there is something wrong with the sales method, as opposed to the image. The risks and rewards of starting a small business In a perfect world, starting a small business would be risk free, but just as with everything else; the degree of risk determines the value of the reward.According to the National Commission on Entrepreneurship, at any given time, 6% to 9% of the United States adult population is involved in planning for a new business. The 5 Habits of Highly Successful Small-Business Owners Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a business that consistently grows and another that struggles just to make ends meet? Or why a business that was started in a basement of a home can outperform some of the best-run "big" companies in sales and profits?Two businesses, operating in the same marketing arena and selling the same products or services, can have extraordinarily different results. How can one business continually grow and prosper, while the other struggles? How can one business owner run a highly successful business while still spending a good portion of his or her time away from the business on trips and vacations with the family, and another owner work day and night only to see his business fail?Such questions have always intrigued me. Do You Really Need a Toll-Free Number for Your Business? Do You Really Need a Toll-Free Number for Your Business? The answer is YES! If you run a home business, whether it's a direct sales business, a part-time venture, or if you work full-time from home, if you don't have a toll-free number, you could be leaving money on the table.Studies show that a potential client is 50% more likely to contact a business who has a toll-free number. Survival Tips For Your Small Business No matter type of business you operate you've got to know how to keep your business alive during economic recessions. Anytime the cash flow in a business, large or small, starts to tighten up, the money management of that business has to be run as a "tight ship. Make Your Business More Profitable More sales and more profit. Isn't that what you want from your business? It's not hard to achieve if you follow these 4 simple tips. Franchising Pros and Cons Last week's question from Anthony R. on how to choose the franchise that would best fulfill his life-long dream of owning his own business sparked a number of emails from other readers wanting to offer their two cents on the subject. Profits are within 6 Degrees of Freedom How far away is the person you need to meet?We have spent some time discussing your inner circle and have suggested that you take time to list all of the people that you know and that KNOW YOU. This inner circle is the start of finding out who knows a person that you need to meet. Putting PR "magic" to work for your small business Why? Because they have access to world class public relations no matter how small they are.That's one way of saying, take care of your key target audiences, Mr/Ms small business owner, and they'll take care of you. What is Business Process Automation? Business Process Automation or BPA for short. This was a buzzword a few years back with anyone and everyone claiming they were experts in this area. Every move you make must reinforce previous and future moves Until the day I learned to play chess I loved playing checkers. Both games require a strategy that maximizes a player's ability to capture her opponents pieces without first losing her own. Employee Induction - Are you Inducting your People - A Practical How To In today's fast paced marketplace it is easy to neglect the small important things!Recently we assisted an organisation prove they had complied with their obligations in inducting their employee. The employee tried to bring a claim for severe stress against the business. Small Business Checks - Money Saving Options When you go into business for yourself, there are many things to consider. What you don't want to worry about is spending too much money on unnecessary items. Remove your negative thinking, change your results Owning a business is a challenging endeavor. If you're like many novice small business owners, you've taken numerous risks with your time and your money, only to see all of your efforts producing little or no result. Fortune 500 Business secret that most small businesses do not know Have you been searching for the perfect home-based business? I have spent nearly twenty-five years searching for the holy-grail of home-based businesses. Now this article is not about a business, but rather a system that Fortune 500 companies always use but it's rarely used by home-based businesses, affiliate or network marketing companies. Looking for a New Office Chair? Perhaps you are building a new home office or you are redoing the one you have. Or, maybe you are looking for an office chair to replace that broken down model sitting in your office. Keeping your Business Alive As long as you eat and breathe you will stay alive. But is that really living? In a crisis that may be enough. Small Business 101: Deadly Ignorance American small business is again in transition. Many employees, now working from home, are no longer tied to a geographic office and the woes of commuting. Most Franchises Are Small Home Businesses Many of our nations 400,000 franchisees run their businesses out of their homes and therefore their home addresses and phone numbers are listed in the Unifrom Franchsie Offering Circular's, attachments. Uniform Franchise Circulars, UFOC, are for franchise buyers and they explain the investment involved. Successfully Adding a Service To Your Business There will come a time in your business where you feel ready to add another service offering. To make this successful, there are ten tips to consider before moving ahead.
|
| Home | Site Map | Privacy Statement | More Articles |
| © 2006 |