Managing Business Relationships

No company can be an island in today's business world. Each one is locked into a complex network of relationships with suppliers, customers and other business partners. To be effective, managers within companies must constantly assess these relationships and the intentions, actions and reactions of their counterparts within them. Indeed, managing its relationships and its position in the business network has become the critical task on which a company's very existence stands or falls. This new edition of Managing Business Relationships aims to help managers and students understand the reality of business networks and how to manage in them. It has been entirely rewritten to include the latest thinking and research from the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) Group. The book * provides a structured way to understand business networks and their effect on the practicing manager. * offers a complete analysis of management in different relationships including those with suppliers, customers, distributors and development partners. * includes a brand new and easy to understand model of managing in networks. This book is vital reading for students of business marketing, purchasing, business networks and relationship management at the MBA and final year undergraduate level. It will also be a valuable resource for all managers operating in business markets, including those in purchasing, marketing, technical development and distribution.

No company is an island in the world of business. Each company is locked into a complex network of relationships with its customers, suppliers and other counterparts. What happens in these relationships is critical to the success of any business. Managing a company's relationships and its position in the network is a central, but often misunderstood aspect of business. This new edition of Managing Business Relationships aims to help managers and students understand the reality of business networks and how to manage in them. It has been entirely rewritten to include the latest thinking and research from the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) Group and includes new chapters on Intermediation in Business Networks, the Economics of Business Relationships and the Practice of Business Networking. Features: • Provides a structured way to understand business networks and their meaning for the practicing manager. • Offers a complete analysis of management in different relationships including those with customers, suppliers, distributors and development counterparts. • Presents a practical analysis of the problems and choices that managers face in developing and changing their relationships and a guide to the critical skills of business networking. The book is vital reading for students of business marketing, purchasing, business networks and relationship management. It is also a valuable resource for all managers operating in business networks, including those in marketing, purchasing, strategy, technical development and distribution.

Selected as a finalist for the 2018 Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book Award! Why do crucial business partnerships and alliances fail so often and how can you keep it from happening to you? Partnering with the Frenemy answers these questions, helping you anticipate, prevent, and solve the problems that lead close business relationships to implode. Drawing on cutting-edge research, Sandy Jap illuminates the widespread “frenemy” phenomenon in organizational partnerships, where partners who start as non-competitive “friends” become “enemies” over time. She identifies key economical and structural causes of “frenemization,” in which success creates imbalances in power dynamics, leading partners to generate resentment, contempt, and often direct competition. She also illuminates crucial social causes for partnership failure, where seemingly innocuous acts of interpersonal opportunism and “sins of omission” gradually poison collaboration. To support her insights, she offers numerous case studies, both ongoing and historical, including Samsung/Google, Martha Stewart/Macy’s, Oracle/Sun Microsystems, Best Buy/Apple, Calvin Klein/Warnaco, and Nike/Footlocker. Most important, she offers specific recommendations for avoiding problems, revitalizing weakening partnerships, and recognizing when a partnership can’t be saved. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT CONTRACTS AND MONEY Understand how to better manage emotions, suspicions, and expectations from Day 1 WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM OTHERS’ FAILING PARTNERSHIPS Anticipate, prevent, and mitigate the core causes of business relationship failure RECOGNIZE PARTNERING “OPPORTUNISM” BEFORE IT DESTROYS COLLABORATION Fix partnering problems while you still can IT’S NOT A MARRIAGE: HOW TO BECOME COMFORTABLE SAYING GOODBYE Know when to end a partnership, and how to part as “friends”

Everyone knows that relationships are critical to business success, but no-one has provided a simple system to turn contacts and acquaintances into valuable assets -- until now. The first systematic program for advancing business relationships. In five easy-to-follow steps, the book shows how to transform any casual business relationship into a valuable source for revenue, leads, and advice. Ed Wallace combines memorable anecdotes with a clear theoretical framework that shows individuals how to leverage their hard business skills with the often-overlooked soft skills of rela-tionship building. Surveyed executives say they need this book. In a recent survey, 88 percent of executives indicated that the strength of their client, cus-tomer, and referral relationships was critical to achieving their goals each year. But only 25 percent of those same executives said they had a formal process for planning, managing, and growing business relation-ships and 73 percent of the group surveyed said they would be very interested in reading a book on this topic. This book delivers the process that so many people and organisations need.

Every business on the planet is trying to maximize the value created by its customers Learn how to do it, step by step, in this newly revised Fourth Edition of Managing Customer Experience and Relationships: A Strategic Framework. Written by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., recognized for decades as two of the world’s leading experts on customer experience issues, the book combines theory, case studies, and strategic analyses to guide a company on its own quest to position its customers at the very center of its business model, and to “treat different customers differently.” This latest edition adds new material including: How to manage the mass-customization principles that drive digital interactions How to understand and manage data-driven marketing analytics issues, without having to do the math How to implement and monitor customer success management, the new discipline that has arisen alongside software-as-a-service businesses How to deal with the increasing threat to privacy, autonomy, and competition posed by the big tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google Teaching slide decks to accompany the book, author-written test banks for all chapters, a complete glossary for the field, and full indexing Ideal not just for students, but for managers, executives, and other business leaders, Managing Customer Experience and Relationships should prove an indispensable resource for marketing, sales, or customer service professionals in both the B2C and B2B world.

Contrary to the gospel of a century of management thinkers, the primary job of the manager is no longer to plan, organize, direct, or control, asserts management expert Leonard Greenhalgh. Instead, he argues, today's successful managers are primarily negotiators who are judged on their ability to foster, coach, protect, and support collaborative relationships -- and manage conflict -- with peers, workers, bosses, suppliers, customers, regulators, competitors, and stakeholders. In one of the most comprehensive analyses of business relationships ever written, Greenhalgh shows how relationships -- not technology or "know-how" -- are the foundation of the new extended enterprise. In immensely readable prose, he describes how companies have moved beyond adversarial relationships of command-and-control hierarchies to a new communal world in which internal networks of autonomous professionals and external networks of collaborating organizations compete against rival networks. In order to manage, managers must acquire a whole new set of negotiating skills, he argues. Traditional negotiating techniques promoted winning and self-interest, leaving a wake of bitterness and acrimony. Here Greenhalgh introduces for the first time a brilliant concept he calls "Commonwealth," which promotes ongoing relationships and the common interest. Using scores of detailed case studies and examples, he offers a set of cutting-edge tools managers can apply immediately to repair and improve relationships between people at all levels of responsibility, between groups, between organizations themselves, and between personalities involving gender differences. Timely, stimulating, and powerful, Managing Strategic Relationships is essential reading for every manager who hopes to succeed in the organization of today.

A business guide to genuine relationships with all your business stakeholders. A must read for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the seven elements every business relationship requires.