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By: Kaitlin-Ann Mulligan
You are a business.
Constantly university students are reminded that each of us are our own business, but how is this relevant to Business-to-Business interaction and personal relationships? Today in class Amber Naslund explained her views and definition of Business-to-Business and I realized something interesting that I never before bothered to acknowledge. Business-to-Business interactions and relationships are similar in many ways.
Communication is key. In Business-to-Business relationships each party needs to know what’s happening. In order to know what is happening each party needs to communicate effectively. Personal relationships require the same communicative skills. Communication in personal relationships are necessary to understand each person’s feelings with no misunderstanding of what true intentions in situations are.
Team work makes the dream work. Two or more parties working together are necessary for generating common goals. Similarly, within personal relationships same goals are needed to run a relationship smoothly. Both take incredible effort but if everyone in the relationship is willing to work together then there is a higher chance of success.
“Trust is like an eraser, it gets smaller and smaller with each mistake.” If you can’t trust your business partner, the question of whether or not the partnership generates best potential for success loops in your mind. Personal relationships are based on trust. When there is no trust in a personal relationship then paranoia takes over and can bring a relationship to a premature end.
Be flexible. Willingness for adaptability especially to stay ahead with trends in Business-to-Business relationships help keep the relationship modern and never outdated. There is always some kind of change in personal relationships because they are always evolving and growing. Each person develops as their own individual, additionally together as a couple.
Compromising. There is no relationship of any kind without compromise. Without compromise a relationship isn’t partnership, it’s one party being more dominant than the other. Compromising creates the greatest results for both sides of the partnership. Business-to-Business relationships and personal relationships need to be willing to come to an agreement with pride aside to get what each other wants by doing it in different ways than originally expected if it were one person and not partners.
Currently in businesses we can see a trend in paying attention to behavioral patterns in consumers. In similar lighting, this goes for when significant others pay attention to the partners behaviors to understand what they like and want in the other. Partnerships need to be “appreciated, taken care of, and paid attention to,” said Amber Naslund during her video conference call during the SOJC’s Strategic Social Media class.
Twitter: @KaitlinAnnCM
Linkedin: Kaitlin-Ann Mulligan
Kaitlin, great post! I can definitely see the connection between B2B relationships and personal relationships. Thank you for making that comparison; I think it brought a lot of clarity to how to B2B relationships can operate successfully. I absolutely love the quote from Amber: “Partnerships need to be “appreciated, taken care of, and paid attention to.”
This is exactly what I was thinking in class when she was talking about the longevity of the professional relationship. I imagined it as a committed relationship that takes give and take and compromise. Thank you for sharing this because it gives us a better visual of what it takes to be apart of a B2B.
I love how you incorporated your own drawing into the post. Well written and easy to follow!
I learned so much from her lecture and then more from this post! I love the comparison between the similarities of business-to-business relationships and personal relationships. They both require the same basic needs that you listed. It’s common to understand the relationship of B2C but B2B is never touched on, as a result, it becomes a bit of a misunderstood subject. The addition of your hand-written drawing is awesome and personal.
As someone who is usually focused on the B2C aspect of marketing I really enjoyed having Amber talk to our class about B2B as well as reading your article. I found it very interesting as well how the B2B space seems a bit more personal relationship-wise. There is definitely a strong relationship aspect in B2C but I see it being more personal “like a relationship” in the B2B world. Great read.
Hi, Kaitlin-Ann
Thanks for your sharing to educate me about how to build and keep the relationship with others. Both B2B and B2C relationship need to care about. I really like the word “Trust is like an eraser, it gets smaller and smaller with each mistake.”