Building New Partnering Relationships
Switching major service providers is often necessary but it can challenge management who have invested considerable effort in building up effective working relationships with the previous supplier. For one of our clients the change was made more difficult because of negative assumptions about the newly appointed provider.
Our consultants were engaged to help build a strong partnering relationship at executive and senior management level between the major corporate customer and its new provider. We worked with the client team to explore their concerns about what they felt they had lost and enabled them to define the fresh opportunities the new relationship would bring. Building on this positive foundation we enabled our clients to define how they would feel best placed to derive maximum benefit from their contract with the provider while building strong working relationships between the two teams. We assisted them in developing the concept of the ‘senior partner’ to assure the client team they were still in absolute control since they were absolutely accountable for revenue. We ran a number of joint team meetings to have them put themselves in the other person’s shoes using role-plays and development sessions. The client team activity was underpinned through our coaching of the senior team and managing the internal communication process to ensure partnering successes were captured and celebrated.
