Four tips to help build strong relationships with your future partners.
By Artur Lupashko, the founder of the Ribas Hotels Group
Whatever your industry and the size of your company, maintaining your partner relationships is becoming a key factor in enabling businesses to reach new heights and unleash their potential.
However, finding and keeping in touch with partners is a matter that requires thorough preparation.
So I would like to share my basic principles and some of the tools that have helped me scale my company.
Step One: Preparing Yourself
I take negotiations seriously and carefully consider potential partners before entering into any communication. My approach to preparing myself for a negotiation consists of two key aspects.
Awareness. My objective is to get to know the future partner in detail so that I can be put in their context and better understand their interests, scope of activity, values, principles, as well as their family, team, other businesses and partnerships.
This will, firstly, help me avoid creating a toxic business partnership. And, secondly, this will give me a deeper understanding of what exactly can be valuable to this person while partnering with me.
Reputation. I need to create a certain impression of myself before we start negotiating. And this is where PR and networking come in. Sometimes a recommendation from a reputable person can make the whole process much easier, and the negotiations will go quickly and well, because my future partner already puts their trust in me. This is actually the key point.
Step Two: Building a Relationship
The key goal for me is to build a strong partnership based on mutual trust, understanding and respect. Identifying common goals and shared values is a crucial step in strengthening this relationship. To achieve this goal, several key aspects should be considered.
Openness. I always seek open and transparent communication with my partners, as this is the approach that builds trust. I try to stick to my commitments, but when I make a mistake, I will always explain the situation and correct my actions. I believe that openly admitting mistakes and then correcting them is far more valuable than avoiding misunderstandings.
Empathy. I try to approach my partners with understanding and empathy, and I try to look at situations from their perspective. It is important to show interest in their needs and challenges and be ready to help and support.
Some partners come to me with questions that they probably wouldn't ask their best friends. And I am happy to help them whenever I can. This makes our relationship very close. So, one of my partners even asked me to become a godfather to his child. To another partner, I have become one of his closest friends. And yet another partner and I used to travel together as families before the war.
Permanent feedback. It is crucial to keep up active communication. We seek to provide information in a timely manner and encourage our partner to express opinions and ideas. I initiate regular meetings and generate reports to avoid misunderstandings. Communication is what makes all the difference in 2024.
In my company, project administrators play an important role as communication assistants. I get an administrator or personal assistant involved in any negotiation or meeting, and then they make sure that everything that has been promised or discussed at the meeting is getting done in a timely and quality manner. They also maintain communication, remind me of the next steps in the negotiation processs, and follow up on all details.
Go to the Ekonomichna Pravda website to find out Step Three.
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