How Can Collaboration Support Your Key Suppliers and Customers?

I've recently been talking to you about collaboration and thinking about key stakeholders in businesses like leaders, the owners, the staff, different teams within them, and you know, really thinking around how this has impacted on them in various different ways and what you can do to use collaborative skills to support you and the changes that you're making within your organisations.? And I wanted? to pick up on another group or two groups actually, one is your supply chain or your outsourced service providers, the people you rely on for key services, this will have impacted on them in terms of their business in the same way it has yours in terms of structure, in terms of staff, whether they carry on with a full team or some are furloughed or whatever the case may be.? So, you know, if you have critical people in terms of your supply chain, if your service or your business is reliant upon them to deliver, then you know, I'm sure you've sat down with them to understand where they are, but I think it's key that you take the time to have frequent and regular conversations, really open up that collaborative dialogue and make sure that you're constantly understanding how they're being affected, and that you're constantly sharing how it's affecting you.? You will be mutually dependent upon each other, so put in place that collaborative discussion so that you're able to have that open and honest dialogue, because it will benefit you in the long run, both of you, and it will really help you to understand what you can do to help each other.

The other absolutely critical group of people this impacts on is obviously your customers, and, you know, again, depending on how you work, you may have ongoing contracts, you may be working with people you've worked with for years, but either way, we're all dependent upon income to survive.? And as much as we've been affected so have our customers.? So, again, it's about a similar thing, have that open dialogue, I'm sure we've all been in contact with our customers to sort of say, you know, we're still open, we're still working, we're happy, we can operate without a problem, or we're having to make these changes or whatever.? So, that critical initial communication will have happened.

But we're in a process now where I think again, because invariably, we have to catch up with ourselves eventually, the way in which we've changed our businesses will become another norm, a new norm.? I think it's important we catch up with ourselves and we reflect a bit to say, ‘okay, so how are we working?’

‘What does that mean?’ ‘What else could we be doing and sharing with our customers?’ ‘What else do we need to know from our customers?’? It's mutually beneficial to share what's happened, what it means for them, what you're doing, and again, how you can help each other.? There are always ways in which you can help each other either by making something easier or speeding something up or using a different system or not contacting them as often strangely enough, but have that dialogue because we're all going through a variety of changes at different paces, and, you know, we're all sort of learning to work in a different way.? So, think about the collaborative way in which you can operate with your clients beyond delivering that service, and think about again, what is it I can do that would help you? what are we doing that's causing you some difficulty? Or vice versa, what could you do that would help us? and find a way forward together.? That open dialogue will pay dividends for both of you and will actually strengthen your relationships.

Nobody at this point in time wants to have a mad rush to secure lots of new clients, and no clients wants to be running around trying to secure lots of new service providers, it's not the environment for that.? So, we should all be focusing on building those long-term client relationships, those longtime supplier relationships that enable us to work through a complicated period together in a constructive way.

So, really think about that.? Take some time, take an hour, sit back reflect, but sit there and work out who the critical people are and what the critical things are that you need to discuss, and just spend a bit of time working on your business and putting the right things back in place.? Very happy to share some of the frameworks that we use with you, we have lots of frameworks that work very effectively and where we're doing this on a regular basis at the moment with our clients and with supply chains.? So, if you'd like more information, you want me to send you some of the information we've got available, send a message and I'll be back in touch and send you some information.