What's the difference between a business relationship and a business partnership?

So often, the effort in developing a new prospect into an engaged, active client is then quickly replaced with a ‘business as usual’ mindset; rather than an appetite to maximise the sphere of opportunity around the shiny new client.

There is always a treasure trove of mutual opportunity available, if you know how to develop a business relationship into a business partnership; but the key to success is more often than not, embedded within the mantra of ‘giving before receiving’, or to use a well-worn cliché ‘putting skin in the game’.

Building delivery partnerships is at the core of what we do and how we work. But you can’t just turn up and announce yourself as business partners, in our experience, you have to do two things:

1.Demonstrate that you always work this way and have done it this way consistently.

2. Add value or ‘put skin in the game’ from the first point of engagement, if not before.

Partnerships evolve over time, but they start at the very beginning of the relationship – recently we made the decision to provide a small service to a prospective new client ( a digital services innovator, with whom we are building a project delivery partnership) for free; because it was the right thing to do, at the right time.

It avoided awkward and unnecessary complexity and commercial imbalance – but it also put down a significant early marker on how working with us will always be in ‘partnership’.

As project delivery partners, our technology and digital teams all subscribe to our ‘pass it on’ ethos, ensuring that through our 'powered by' project delivery model, we share our knowledge with technology and digital innovators delivering to their end clients and to their end clients’ people – because that’s what partners do, right?

If you are a technology and/or digital services innovator, and would like to understand more about how provide consulting can partner with you to deploy a project delivery team, through our 'powered by' model, do get in touch! By Gary McQuade - Client Engagement Director