Relationship Criteria

When you reflect on your own life and the especially strong relationships that you have had, you will find that these are primarily driven by one of two things: either you enjoy the company of these people, or you learn from them. Other than close family, most friends and acquaintances or people that you are close to will meet one or the other of these two criteria—it is unusual to have friends who do not. Relationships you have that do not meet these criteria are usually ephemeral—for example, you might meet someone while playing a sport. If the only thing you have in common is that sport, then the relationship will not last if one of you gives up playing for some reason—the common interest that bound you both is gone, and so is your relationship.

You will find that these drivers apply equally when it comes to customer and client relationships. Sometimes organizations make partnership arrangements and you might inherit relationships—at this point, the onus for renewing or continuing the relationship is on the vendor. It is necessary that the individual the vendor interacts with is enjoying the relationship and/or learning from it. If both these criteria are missing, it will be more and more difficult for the vendor to preserve that client relationship and chances are, the contract will not be renewed when the time comes to do so. If the relationship is threatened, the natural outcome will be that during continuous dialogue, you will see the early warning signals that hint that you might lose the account and you need to do something about it. Similarly, during the selling process, if the salesperson is unable to convince the buyer that it would be enjoyable to work with your organization and/or it would be a learning experience, the selling process would quickly become modified and prices would determine the choice of vendor. If your organization follows a strategy of differentiation, this strategy should be extrapolated to the level of relationship building among its emissaries, whether they are sales or service people, and their counterparts in the target client company.