Over the past several years Sahl Comm has had the opportunity to partner with some great companies. The partnerships that produced the most success, both from a bottomline business aspect and from an internal growth perspective, are the ones that had a clear focus and fostered true partnership, team work and trust.
We believe that what you bring to the table; time, talent and treasure, should be your contribution to the team effort. We have learned that these types of partnerships are only successful if all the people involved remove their individualized fears and realize that as a whole we will all achieve success. Below are two case studies highlighting a partnership that worked well and one that didn’t work well and why.
Case Study #1: A breakdown in communication will always foster a breakdown in trust. We partnered with Company XXX to help them open lines of communication into a new market sector. As the newness of the relationship (that time when everything is blooming with possibilities) began to wain into the cold hard facts of a situation, Company XXX began to close off communication. They had a concern and a misconceived notion on one of our actions. Instead of bringing it to the surface for discussion they sat on their thoughts and feelings for three months. Those three months were difficult on both sides of the partnership. We had no clue what they were thinking and at the end of three months they had convinced themselves that what they thought was honest to “God” the truth, at least as they saw it.
One day it came to a head and one of the leaders company XXX brought the situation to our attention. We were shocked that what we did was even perceived in that negative light. We tried to explain why we did what we did and the motivation behind it had nothing to do with what they were thinking. But after they had sat on it for three months to them it was “their truth.” So lesson learned for us,only work with open honest communication on BOTH sides. End result we did help company XXX break into the selected market sector, but not to the successful degree it could have been.
Case Study #2: A clear line of communication will always foster and strengthen trust. We were asked to partner with two separate companies to be part of a package promotional deal for a new client. One company took the lead and we assisted in coordinating and pushing out the final product through our outreach efforts. We kicked off the partnership with a round table face-to-face meeting. A level of trust was already established. We kept the end goal in focus and worked towards it. Along the way we encountered set backs but they were handled with open, honest communication and a sense of understanding. We, as a team, found a way to get back on track and keep the momentum in tack. Each company was responsible for supplying their talent to the project. In the end the client receive and outstanding product they can use for a long time, received a large amount of publicity pf their project and ended up increasing their bottom line. Lesson learned here is to honor and cultivate those relationships that have open and honest communication and trust.