We asked for your blog topic ideas, and this week’s post is straight from you, our subscribers. Here is a summary of what one of our e~colleague shares with us:

I once had a big customer who spoke to me about commitment, openness, and trust. However in the end, they couldn't make a commitment, they didn't trust anyone, and if I was open about key issues I got in trouble.

Once I moved on, it was clear to me that my objective of adding a lot of business didn't mean a hill of beans if at the end of the day I didn't get paid.

If I could have been brutally honest from the beginning about what my company's goals were, it’s quite possible we never would have worked together. Had we worked together, we would have had to build in checks and balances from the start. We may have progressed to a lasting relationship.

Never be afraid to ask for what you need as a business.....

Creating lasting customer relationships through brutal honesty requires an environment of trust. Trust is earned early in the development of a relationship, particularly while actively listening to clients. Often for most of us this requires a shift in paradigms to focus on the client’s needs and wants instead of our own. The process of engaging in client centered dialogue and actively listening to the client’s strategies and goals can feel risky.

Risky because, we are checking our ego at the door and relinquish control, and letting someone else drive the meeting. But I find it’s more rewarding to listen, first, and problem solve with our clients once a need is expressed, rather than force a prepackaged 60 second elevator pitch on someone.

When we listen and understand, we feel a connection and our clients become committed to listen to our honest appraisal of their business situations. This commitment leads to lasting relationships, where over time, unexpected business opportunities present themselves.

When trust and honesty exist, both parties move together towards goals. Each person is communicating openly, and the checks and balances of proper documentation are not divisive. Documentation becomes a guide to enhance the relationship.

While developing honest business relationships, it is our job to both actively listen and contribute honest feed back. When we are unable to be honest with a client and yet continue pursuing a client’s project, the costs can be devastating both financially and emotionally. It is said that trust is intuited, not rationalized; if we are not perceiving trust and are not building honest rapport it may be better to move on than to accrue more sunk costs and further risk.

Here are two good books and a blog that I have found insightful which discuss trust in business relationships.

Trust Based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships by Charles Green

The Trusted Advisor by David Maister

Client Relationships: Honesty is the Best Policy

They are all brought to you by ASAP. 

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Here is something else that is cool! I recently read an interesting article in the PDMA’s Quarterly Magazine, Visions, March 2010 Issue entitled The Story of Eli Lilly’s Open Innovation Journey - How One Company Developed a Mature Model. The article discusses Eli Lilly’s approach to open innovation, collaborative product development and its creation of alliances. This link is to the article on pages 19-22.

Collaboration as a Process
Step 2: Synchronize Systems

The subject of my last blog, Collaboration as a Process, provided a model for thinking about collaboration as process where creating client-centered dialogue is the first step. Shifting our internal paradigm from “Let me tell you about me and my products” to focusing on our client’s paradigm by asking “What are your goals for your products and services?” leads to creating client-centered dialog, which helps to begin uncovering true needs for our clients and end users.

Client-centered dialog and active listening facilitates the free flow of information. We learn about our client’s core competencies. We learn about our client’s strategic objectives and vision for success in the market place. We learn what our client’s are really good at producing, and how they go about bringing their products and services to market. Then, together we can move to problem solving and synchronizing systems.

The goal of synchronizing systems in the collaborative process is to align all stakeholders within the supply chain to efficiently meet end user requirements. This outcome is achieved by exploring the client’s and the supply chain’s systems, processes and core competencies to consider how the combined services can serve to strengthen the client’s positioning to deliver on its strategic objectives.

The process of examining key components uncovers gaps between the client’s strategic objectives in meeting end user requirements and how it delivers on those objectives. These gaps are value creation opportunities. Value creation opportunities include the ability to align stakeholder systems and processes, to reduce or eliminate redundancies, while each stakeholder works within its core competencies. When organizations collaborate within their respective core competencies, organizations can provide efficient solutions to the end user at reduced unit prices and at significantly lower investment cost.

Once the value creation opportunities are identified, supply chain resources are qualified and the systems are synchronized, then the next step in the collaborative process begins. This next step, integrating operations, is critical in delivering the promises of meeting target price points and lowered investment costs.

Continue the conversation with me on my next blog post, where I discuss methods on how to integrate operations within collaborative relationships.

In the product development community, collaboration is an emerging concept and can be thought about as a process. Collaboration appears in Product Manager’s blogs, in product development books and journals as well as the topic of many product development seminars.  Collaboration and collaborative relationship should not be mistaken for the 90’s buzzword, partnership. In product development, collaboration is being conceptualized as a process that is embodied by three main components:

First, to help understand collaboration, it is helpful to consider what it is not collaboration. For distinction, collaboration is not a partnership. Partnerships focus on transactional relationships. To simplify the concept, a partnership implies transactions from one party to another, such as a legally binding relationship where documents are signed for the delivery of products and services for the exchange of money. Collaboration is an idea sharing process where business needs, information and knowledge are willingly contributed and problem solving begins.

To move from partnership thinking to collaboration, we can view collaboration as a process where we focus our energies on one component of the process at a time, then widen our perspective back to the concept of collaboration. The first step in the collaborative process is creating client-centered dialogue.

Creating client-centered dialogue requires the development of an open and trusting environment. Creating this environment requires a shift in our context or paradigm from “me” or “my” to “you” and “ours,” and most importantly that of the end user. We shift from an internal paradigm: “Let me tell you about me and my products, my services…,” to focusing on our customers paradigm by asking, “What are your goals for your products and services? What types of challenges are you facing? What needs are being left unfulfilled?"

When we collaborate, we intentionally shift our thinking to that of our clients wants, needs and desires. We then are free to ask open-ended questions, actively listen and brainstorm ideas. Through shifting our paradigm, we change our dialogue and we begin the collaborative process.

Creating client-centered dialogue allows opportunities for the free flow of information, thereby, true business and end-user's needs can be uncovered.  When we discover these true needs (or gaps), a different opportunity presents itself, the opportunity to innovate! Thereby, we create a unique and differentiated value for the end-user. Additionally, the intentional focus on collaboration can be purposed to lowering overall unit prices, quickening response times, and lowering inventory levels while enhancing the end users’ experience with our products and services. 

In the first essential step in collaborating, we are initiating client-centered dialogue to begin achieving an opportunity to create an exceptional value for the client(s). To continue the value creation in the collaborative process, it is necessary to analyze and determine how to synchronize with client systems.

Stay tuned for my next blog, where I will discuss my methods on how organizations can synchronize systems to deliver exceptional value to clients.