Brewed Fresh Daily

Economic developers use networking as a strategy to make in-roads with businesses and other resources they need to do their jobs. Regional, state, national and international associations exist to facilitate this networking. There is another side to networking, which has been getting much attention in the business world, called "relationship management." I find that networking is usually not an end in itself, rather it is a step toward extending existing and forming new relationships that coincide with our interests, abilities, goals, and activities. I ran across a wonderful article on relationship management as a formal business strategy. Here is a clip from it: "Alliances, partnerships, and relationships of all kinds in the business environment, whether with external parties such as suppliers or distributors, or internally with the groups and divisions of the same company, require a repeatable process and discipline to be successful. Partnering concepts are easy to think about, and alliances are even easy to create. But their value only becomes clear upon the implementation of the relationship. And sadly, that is where many companies fail."