"Strengthening Your Business Relationships" by Ken Bernhardt Taylor E. Little Jr. Regents Professor of Marketing and Special Assistant to the Dean Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University Atlanta Business Chronicle - August 1, 2008 Much has been written lately concerning customer relationship management or CRM. I am a strong believer in the optimal management of a firm's customer relationships, but also believe that, in addition, there are other relationships which need to be managed well.  What is a relationship? Webster's Dictionary defines relationship as "the state or character of being related or interrelated; connection; kinship; or state of affairs existing between those having relations or dealings". Character is a key word here, and Webster's definitions of character include "quality" and "moral excellence and firmness." In addition to successfully managing relationships with customers, it is important to have a strategy for developing excellent quality relationships with employees, vendors, the media, the community, shareholders or company owners, and even competitors. Given space limitations, I will address the first 3 of these.   Employees:  Research has found that a majority of employees are not happy with their employer or work environment.  What are you doing to make your employees love to come to work?  How often do you thank them for going above and beyond the call of duty when they do? What have you done to make it a fun work environment?  What are the things you used to do to create employee loyalty that have gone by the wayside?  How often do you seek advice from your employees, especially front line employees and others that have direct customer contact such as sales personnel? Do you have a systematic way of monitoring the satisfaction of your work force, starting with your direct reports?  What are you doing for the professional development of your people?  Are you encouraging and paying for them to develop new skills?  Is the compensation of key people tied to the overall success of the company?  Are you sharing key information regarding the company's strategy, successes and shortcomings and involving them in the creation of company goals and new products and services?  Are you giving your employees honest feedback on how they are performing and finding out what support they need to succeed in their jobs? Vendors:  Many companies treat vendors as adversaries instead of reaping the benefits from treating them as strategic partners.  How often do you sit down with your vendors and discuss the status of the relationship?  Are you the first customer they will bring new ideas or new products to?  Is price the only attribute discussed during negotiations?  One company I am familiar with has initiated periodic "Vendor Days" where they invite key vendors to come to the company to spend a few hours bringing new ideas.  The vendors are asked to assess the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and to propose actions the company could take to be more successful.  The vendors are asked to present their analysis of key industry trends, their thoughts on major competitor best practices, and potential new products that would increase the company's market share (whether the vendor sells components of these or not).  Sharing information about the company's strategy and involving their vendors in this way strengthens the relationship with the vendors, to the company's great advantage over time. The media:  Most companies are in reactive mode when it comes to the media.  Do you know personally the reporters who are assigned to cover your industry for the trade press?  Have you ever called them up and suggested a potential story to them, especially if it is not an idea for a "puff piece" on your company, but is instead a broader story about an evolving industry trend?  Have you invited the reporter to visit your company and meet your key executives?  If there is bad news, do you alert them ahead of time so you can position it in the best possible light or do you wait until they call for a comment when they are on deadline?  Are you willing to make your senior executives available to the press or is the head of PR the only one who ever talks to reporters?  Don't assume that because you are a small company that the press has no interest.  Most companies are small companies and the press needs to report on what is happening with small companies just as much or more than with large businesses. I can't end the column with out talking about the benefit of developing a relationship with the universities in your area.  As an example, in Atlanta we are blessed with having a number of first rate business schools here, as well as great programs in engineering, architecture, medicine, and many other disciplines.  A quality relationship with one or more of the universities can pay big dividends.  Let me give you some examples.  With a strong relationship, when you need to hire new employees or interns, you will get preferred treatment, thus having access to the crème of the crop. There may be times when you have a project that isn't worth hiring a consulting firm to work on but would make a terrific class project for a team of highly motivated students (MBA's for example).  Business schools are often looking for class assignments of this type to give students practical experience.  Are you offering your executives as speakers to classes, developing their presentation skills and raising the company profile on campus for future employees or customers?  Synonyms for relationship include dependence, alliance, and affinity.  Mutually dependent alliances yield strong affinity and mutually beneficial results.  The key here, as in many things, is to have a strategy for successfully maximizing your relationships. It is important to understand that for relationships to not just survive but to thrive, attention is required.  Are you paying attention to all of your relationships? If not, now is a great time to start.