Small Business Partners

Small business success is as much a function of persistence, positioning, and implementation as it is relationship building. With whom are you investing? What you put out, positive or negative, really does come back to you.

Partnering with employees is crucial to the kind of service employees deliver to your customers and how they use your resources. Your employees can sabotage your success without you evening knowing what they are doing.

Partnering with customers is important, if you want them to return. You want your customers to perceive you as their ___, you fill in the blank. You want to be top of mind in the consciousness of your customers. Everything you do, say, and do not do will have an effect on how your customers hold your business in their minds.

Partnering with your competitors is equally important. Competitors are, any business that competes with you for access to your customers wallets. Are restaurants and auto dealers competitors? Absolutely they are. A new car will mean less dinners out.However, you can still partner with the competition through cross-promotion. The more you and your competitors get people out of their homes and into your places of business, the more people will let go of that money and circulate it. This will help the economy. Work with local business to develop cross-promotion campaigns. It will serve you well.

You Want the Results More than the Alliance

Partnering for Profits; You Want What It Does

Let’s face it, few individuals wake up in the morning and think, “Wow, I want an alliance.” Rather, you want what the alliance will do for you. An alliance is nothing more than a conduit for delivering value. As you explore the possibilities in developing alliance relationships, keep your focus on benefit rather than process. The big companies are so focused on alliance process that they can easily forget about delivering value.

Personal Responsibility; Two Windows

I have written quite a lot lately about personal responsibility www.rigsbee.com/morearticles.htm. As a business leader you have double duty. First, you have to be responsible to effectively run your business—to see to it that your employees have a livelihood. And second, you have to be responsible to motivate your employees to be responsible themselves. As you develop a deeper partnering relationship with your employees, help them to see, and mirror, your personal responsibility through both windows. Help them to be responsible, and to hold you responsible.

Platform Charisma; Will the Real You Please Stand?

When you try to be someone else on the platform, you usually suck—unless of course you are a professional impersonator. Here’s the thing; you bring a unique set of skills, tools, and values to the platform—why not release them to deliver the highest value possible to your audience. Careful now, release the best you, and not the worst you. The worst you is the lazy you. The best you is the prepared, excited, and enthusiast you. Always reveal the best you.