The key to success in business is building great relationships, whether that’s with your customers, suppliers, investors or employees. Here are 9 ways to build better business relationships.

1. Give before you take

Building better business relationships is all about making the other person feel valued and important. It’s a great idea to offer help before you ask for help from others as this sets the tone of the relationship. Sharing helpful information with your customers positions you as an expert who can solve their problem rather than someone who just wants to sell to them.

2. Develop mutual respect

Mutual respect happens when both parties felt heard and understood. This can only happen if you are willing to listen and adjust your position if necessary. Relationships can only flourish if there is trust and mutual respect.

3. Act with integrity

Do what you say you will. Integrity is a vital part of successful relationships where you need to be able to rely on the other party and they on you. If you fail to keep your promises, soon this will have a detrimental impact on your relationship.

4. Share goals and celebrate success

A shared understanding of where your company is heading is helpful for nurturing all business relationships. When you share your goals, you can find more common ground and this strengthens the bonds between you. Another great way to deepen relationships is to celebrate successes whether that’s yours, your supplier’s or your customer’s.

5. Go beyond expectations

Clear guidelines for how you behave with customers, suppliers and employees can cement business relationships because everyone knows where they stand. However, overdelivering on those expectations can lift the relationship to a whole new level – what are the delight factors in your business that keep your customers coming back for more and your employees motivated and happy?

6. Encourage openness and honesty

All relationships struggle if one party is secretive or worse still, doesn’t tell the truth. Openness and honesty are essential for building better business relationships. Of course, this needs to be set in the context of what you are allowed to share when it comes to business information – never break an NDA or other legal agreement.

7. Spend time face to face

Although it’s quicker and easier to jump online for meetings, invest some time meeting face to face if it makes sense. Making the effort and taking the time to visit your customer or supplier in person means a lot. They know you could just send a Zoom or Teams link, but you’ve chosen to travel to them. It’s a great way to make the other party feel important and further cement the relationship.

8. Check-in regularly

Even if you aren’t currently working with customers or suppliers, you can build better business relationships by contacting them on a regular basis without an agenda – just to check-in with them and see how they are doing. Then, when your customer needs your service, or you need supplies quickly, you won’t have to start from scratch again building the relationship back up.

9. Solicit feedback

Don’t operate your business in a vacuum. Asking your clients, suppliers and employees for their candid feedback on your performance can go a long way to strengthening ties and improving relations.

Building better business relationships takes time

Creating and nurturing relationships doesn’t happen overnight but if you work on these 9 things, you can create lasting relationships that are mutually beneficial. Making more effort to grow relationships requires energy and willingness to change when you find things which aren’t working as well as they could. A Virtual Assistant could be a great asset in helping to nurture relationships from making sure that your CRM is kept up to date to booking face-to-face visits, sending out surveys or even sorting out corporate festive gifting and Christmas cards.

I’d love to chat to you about how you can build better business relationships and how you could benefit from VA support. Call me on  07932 040454 or drop me a line at .

Let’s connect on LinkedIn.

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