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Turning your clients into partners guarantees long-term business benefits. To start with, who is a partner and who is a vendor? Entrepreneurs defined partnership as the relationship between two or more people to trade or do business. Each person contributes something like property or skill and shares in both the profits and the losses of the business. On the other hand, in B2B, a vendor to vendor relationship can feel transactional. The vendor simply exchanges goods and services with money. Being a vendor is basically transactional. 
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For any business that is after growth, seeking partnership rather than clientship, has more growth potential. To illustrate better, a client does not bother about how you run your day-to-day business or is he interested in if your tools or equipment are running. He is simply concerned about delivery. The client is after the final output of your business, and does not concern himself with how you go about it, neither does he contribute anything whatsoever to how your business survives and upscales. But a partner is both a client and a partner in progress. He has a vested interest in the growth of your business and contributes directly to it. If you change the direction of your focus from a vendor to vendor or transactional relationship to a partnership, the aim becomes how we can create a win-win relationship. One where we have a vested interest in each other’s success. Transforming clients to partners is presently a survival mechanism for B2B in the pandemic and post-pandemic world. This is what goes on in a B2B partnership. For example, a software maintenance firm might choose to partner with a software development firm to give users the best experience. The goal of the partnership is to ease burdens and cut costs.  In this article, I will teach you three ways to secure a partnership deal from a vendor client.
  • Exhibit Desire
The first step towards securing a long-term partnership with vendors is to exhibit a desire to make them succeed. For example, if you are a hospitality service provider, you can choose to partner with an inter-state transporting company that usually has a thousand travellers daily.
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You desire to see that their driver’s journey is very comfortable as they have good food and a place to take a break, while also bringing their travellers to your restaurants nationwide. Another better example is the Uber-Spotify partnership. Uber’s partnership with Spotify lets Uber riders easily stream their Spotify playlists whenever they take a ride. This makes the Uber experience feel more personalized and encourages Uber riders to subscribe to Spotify Premium (for more control of their tunes both inside and outside Uber). Therefore, turning vendors into clients is all about presenting your desire for mutual benefits.
  • Provide Service
Before asking for a partnership from a client, he or she must have enjoyed a relative period of service provision from you. Serving your client’s needs from the beginning is important to turn them into partners. However, if you are concentrated on your bottom line and not on clients’ needs, then your work will reflect your one-directional focus. If you are focused on your vendor’s customers’ needs and not your bottom line, then your work will reflect your equitable nature.
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For example, as a food spice company, basically, your bottom line is to make profit, but if you want to enter into a partnership with a restaurant, the bottom line should be that the restaurant’s customers have the best food consumption experience. While you are interested in offering quick distribution of your goods to your partner, you are indirectly helping them meet their customer’s service goals.
  • Simply Listen
Effective partnership is strengthened when you listen to what your vendors turned partners want.  Listening is a special skill. We all have a predisposition to be thinking of the answer or the solution once someone begins to share a problem. In partnership, listening is very key because you can go into the partnership deal with servicing the pain points of your partners.  Featured Image Source: Investopedia
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This article was first published on 27th April 2022

nnaemeka-emmanuel

Nnaemeka is an academic scholar with a degree in History and International Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is also a creative writer, content creator, storyteller, and social analyst.

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