Marketers know full well that people aren’t rational. They know that logic may make people think, but it’s emotion that makes them act. And they know that to make a genuine connection with customers, their propositions need to appeal to both the logical and the emotional sides of the brain.
Building a collaborative relationship is exactly the same. Why? Because a business relationship isn’t just a rational thing that happens between two corporations, it’s primarily an emotional thing between two sets of people. Sure, for it to work, there needs to be a rationale behind it, but also there has to be a genuine emotional connection.
Negotiation training focuses on the rational, logical side of negotiation; immersing you in the process, the behaviours, the BATNAs and the break points that are so critical for competitive negotiations. But that doesn’t develop the emotional skill: the ability to persuade, to connect, and to build a lasting collaborative relationship. So here’s what you need to know:
There are three factors that help to create a connection, each of which I will cover in detail over the next few weeks. Without these three, your relationship will always be purely transactional, but with these, your relationship can shift to a completely new level.
- Clear purpose: What is the collaboration aiming to achieve? If the goal is simply to drive sales and make profits, you’re never going to get emotional engagement.
- Infectious passion: Both teams need to feel passionate about the specific communities this collaboration will serve, and be intently focused on the WOW that it will deliver for them.
- Matching personality: Most partnerships fail due to a personality clash, either of individuals or of cultures. Values and attitudes need to be complimentary: and I don’t mean the words on the posters; I mean those deeply ingrained ideas about what is good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable.
BOTTOM LINE: Relationships aren’t built through logic and process. They need an emotional connection. This won’t happen through talking about the numbers, but by expressing your purpose, your passions and your personality. All those things your training taught you to hide.