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Standard of Excellence: Going Public With Your Partner

One aspect of a great partnership with your vendors is to show the world how you are working together. Demonstrating how a great partnership can serve both your companies well and is beneficial to your industry. This, of course, assumes that you, the customer, and your supplier have a relationship so solid that you are ready and willing to go public. Here are nine ways to go public with your partner.

1. Co-Advertise

Use your partner in your ads, and if you are the vendor, use your customer in your ads or co-produce the ad. There is nothing better than a customer saying something nice about you, so why not invite your vendor to be highlighted in one of your ads? You're paying for your customer to have an ad that talks about their company and how your company helps them be successful. It's a win-win situation any way you look at it.

You can also share the cost of an ad that highlights both of your companies and some great things you are doing together. It demonstrates that you have companies that are partnership worthy. And if one of your other customers complains, no worries; invite them to be in the next ad.

2. Develop Literature Together

If you have developed a great product together or completed some significant research and development, why not contribute to the literature or other marketing collateral materials that broadcast your mutual accomplishment?

3. Co-Produce Lunch-and-Learns

Similar to #2, if you have developed a new product or have made some great inroads in a specific technology, put on a lunch-and-learn together. It highlights the good work you have done together and helps others in the market as well.

4. Co-Produce Webinars

Invite your suppliers to take part in a webinar you are producing for your target market. Or better yet, do a webinar together, sharing in the work and rewards of presenting valuable information.

5. Write a Book Together

If the subject is big enough, write a book and invite your suppliers to take part. Anytime you can show the other side of the story on a particular subject is a good thing.

6. Write White Papers Together

As with #5, you can write and deliver white papers on a particular project you successfully did together.

7. Issue Press Releases Highlighting What a Company Has Done

This is one of the easiest and quickest ways to share what you have accomplished together. It also goes a long way toward demonstrating the results of your partnership.

8. Issue Newsletters and Tech Bulletins Together

This is especially effective if you have developed a product, service, or technology where you want to create something that a certain group of companies will benefit from. If you are brave enough, develop and publish the newsletter/bulletin in real-time and in coordination with the actual progress of the project. That will get the audience involved as they follow your project and experience first-hand the challenges and triumphs you are facing.

9. Use YouTube Together

Similar to #8, if you're working on a new product with your vendor, are you reporting your progress in real-time with YouTube videos? You could post video progress reports weekly or even daily to celebrate your partnership, create a scintillating and dramatic video, and pre-advertise the product even before it is developed.

Summary

The most important aspect of this collection of ideas is that it further cements the partnership you have with your vendor/partner. Nothing will further the already great relationship you have with your vendor than going public with it. Everybody wins.

Also, remember that you do not have to do this with only one supplier at a time. Bring in a number of suppliers. As the customer, it is your responsibility to unite all of your vendors into one team. Your team is completely dedicated to your company's success, and the best way to do that is to treat them as true partners.

The rewards for treating your suppliers as partners are tremendous, from not only having a team of suppliers willing to go to the mat for you but also having a lone line of new suppliers ready to become a valued member of your supplier team. The strength of all of us in our industry, as in all industries and in everything we do, is only based on the people around us. People on your team who have been treated fairly and as equals will do everything they can to help your company be successful.

It is good to remember what Rabbi Marc Gellman once said: "A partner is someone you work with on a big thing that neither of you can do alone. If you have a partner, it means that you can never give up because your partner is depending on you. On the days when you think I am not doing enough, and on the days when I don't think you are doing enough, even on those days, we are still partners."