Develop Your Business By Cultivating These Three Key Relationships

Consciously pursuing a solid business development strategy is the key to making your business grow. If you’re finding that your business growth has “stalled out” or that you’re having trouble turning a profit, improper business development is the likely culprit.

Business development is all about making and nurturing the key relationships which can help you grow your business. Note that business development relationships stretch far beyond your relationships with customers and potential customers. Those are important, but they aren’t the only relationship that matters. In fact, being too hyper-focused on sales can actually hurt your business. Here are several other relationships that should receive your close attention.

Relationships with vendors

Not all businesses use vendors. But if yours does, those relationships can have a big impact on your ability to do business.

Don’t believe me? A restaurant provides an illustrative case. How happy do you think the restaurant’s customers would be if the establishment runs out of soda? The vendor might not have delivered the soda on time, but the restaurant is the one that’s going to get the blame.

Therefore, it’s important to keep communicating with your vendors. 

Relationships with your employees

You can opt to treat your employees like worthless serfs who should be grateful for their jobs. But that’s not a very good way to get the best out of them, and it can create some serious backlash when the word gets out to your customers.

Instead, try working just as hard to develop relationships with your employees as you do to develop relationships with your customers. If you’re taking the time to hire the right people, and you’re taking the time to put those people in the right positions, then you shouldn’t have any problems. You can feel free to treat each of these individuals like talented superstars who are capable of taking your business to the next level. People are your partners in this journey…not your slaves.

Your relationship with the business itself

You might not realize it, but your business is an entity in its own right. If you don’t have the proper relationship with your business then it will eat you alive!

You can’t get so wrapped up in putting out your daily fires that you don’t take the time to plan and strategize. Business development also means identifying opportunities and creating strategies to help your business succeed in the future!

 Nobody can steer this ship but you. You can always hire someone else to plug leaks.