The world is a collection of communities and the business world is no different. But many times when we hear the term “community” and business mentioned together, it is reference to the area where the business is located more than the individuals and companies that keep the world running. Your “community” at its core, is your specific niche in your industry. Beyond this direct relationship, is that of your suppliers and customers.

Business to business sales offer you an opportunity to develop reciprocal relationships that can have far reaching benefits for your own company as well as your customers. Developing constructive partnerships with other businesses can help you manage your company more efficiently and provide ways to reduce your overhead.

Cultivating these relationships to a point where cooperative advertising can be done is one way to approach selecting businesses for a reciprocal relationship. If your company and one of your suppliers have complementary products and/or services, your advertising efforts will have more impact. What your customer sees is enhanced value and a more credible business presence.

While there are benefits to developing these types of relationships, it is important to make sure that the other business has a code of ethics that is compatible with your own. Discussing customer service in depth with any vendor that you are considering is first on the list: if you cater to your customers and the other business never returns a phone call, there are bound to be problems.

If you want to establish a relationship with a large corporation, again the keyword is benefit. You need to be prepared to show how your service or product will find a specific need that will enhance the profitability of the corporation. It is not sufficient simply to say that your product or service is the best. The larger the company, the more competition you will face which makes research all the more important.

When you want to broaden your scope of community to encompass a relationship with a vendor, look for compatibility of purpose in order to make the most of the relationship. Small business owners that are working with limited marketing budgets can benefit greatly by the word of mouth advertising that is created in the process of collaborations with suppliers. Endorsements of products and services are one of the strongest sales tools available; people are more receptive to recommendations that are made by a person that they have a relationship with than expensive promotions.

Start building your reciprocal business relationships with small projects that are easy to manage without a huge time investment. Make sure that you involve all the individuals that will be affected by the project or be called into participation to make the project a success. As you work through the process of the project work, take time to discuss and evaluate the impact it is creating for both your business and that of your vendor so that it can be refined and developed into a long term, mutually beneficial method of operation.

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Do you conduct or manage your business, just take close look at some of the daily activities that you or your employees generally perform to run your business operations. If you try to observe or study your own business daily doings, you may find that most of the tasks that you perform are repetitive as well as tedious in nature and so a proper automation procedure is required that can effectively automate the entire process with zero involvement from you. Business process automation also known as BPA is thus defined as a process that focus on streamlining and automating key processes that help in driving the value for a organization. It consists of integrated applications and cuts down the labor cost wherever possible. Gaining its popularity, this process is also defined as technology components that have the ability to substitute manual process and further manage the flow of information to reduce cost and increase consistency.

Looking at the present scenario due to rigorous demand in the market, many enterprises are planning to deduce costs and in-turn increase shareholder value. As a result in order to survive in such competitive environment, businesses can have significant cost reductions and efficiencies by automating business process flows and eliminating non-value-adding human interventions. Business Process Automation software enables organizations to design, implement, observe, and constantly upgrade business processes that span organizational boundaries.

Talking about some of the major benefits of BPA, it makes business operation faster and easier. Apart from this it also automates the intricate processes mostly involved in running projects, programs and managing resources across the lifecycle. In fact it is the most inclusive workflow engine in the industry and offers the most elasticity for corporations in spite of organization size.

However, it is important to note that this process can deliver profit to any organization only with a combination of process re-engineering and technology along with organizational structure that can support both. In addition to this, BPA features three important pillars like: orchestration, integration, and dynamic process automation and combination of these three elements further enables organization to simplify and automate business processes despite of scale and intricacy of any business operation.

Orchestration facilitates business managers to work together on automated process designs using easy-to-use and intuitive interfaces. But orchestration must assemble and transform data/events into actionable information which further smooth the progress of proactive decision-making. Nevertheless orchestration is not useful in the absence of integration, so integration is must to change and replace critical data that affect the decision-making of humans and machines. Since most of the business processes consist of different systems, varied environments, and multiple applications, so an effective integration plays a vital part in business process automation.

The final element of business process automation is dynamic and automated execution across multiple systems. An effective automation finally enables organizations to eliminate repetitive and manual tasks. Automation integrates control over the development process to eliminate the hassles of managing and maintaining code over the long term.

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There is an old saying “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” The following 11 step process is a road map for identifying, tracking and landing new business. Unfortunately I can’t do justice to the process in one article but I hopefully will provide you with a good overview. In my seminars and workshops I have found this process helpful to many small business owners. Seeing the big picture of new business development, recognizing areas of missed opportunities and assisting in the elimination of that overwhelming feeling can move an entrepreneur to utilize the many marketing tools available to increase their business.

Warning: Do not expect to do this all yourself. Consider a family member or friend to help. An administrative assistant is a worthwhile investment, if you can afford it. Make sure they want to do the job and they understand your business.

1. Goal Setting – Pick a dollar figure you wish to attain for the year. Make it realistic. A desired salary is a good starting point. A financial goal is needed to help work out how much business must be conducted.

2. Prospect List – There are many places to acquire prospect lists. You usually have to purchase them but not always. Remember, you get what you pay for. Get lists from list brokers, associations, magazines, networking groups, Chamber of Commerce, and other companies with similar target groups to yours. You tend to pay more money for newer more accurate and more specific information.

3. Qualifying Prospect Call – No matter where you get a list or prospect name you must do 2 things. Check the accuracy of the information and make sure this contact is in fact the real prospect. Do Not Try To Sell Over The Phone at this stage.

4. Database – Take the prospect information out of the shoebox and put the information onto a database. There are many inexpensive contact management software packages available. They will make your prospecting 10 times more efficient and effective.

5. Lead Generation Package – No cold calls. Before you make a contact with a prospect send out a lead generation package. This could be a post card or letter or simple flyer. Printed and mailed is better than faxing. All you want to do is whet their appetite. Tell them a little about your product or service. Who you are, what you do, why you are different.

6. Lead Generation Follow-up Call – Make sure they have seen your lead generation piece. Determine if they can use your product or service. Do Not Try To Sell Over The Phone at this stage. Set a meeting; put a face to a name for your benefit and for theirs. (If your product or service lends itself to telephone sales and it is not cost effective to meet in person, go ahead with the sell.)

7. (A) Interested or Immediate Need – This means you will need to have a first meeting/presentation.

(B) No Need – Track them with follow-up calls, newsletters etc. If they have no need now, they may need you in the future or this contact may move on and be replaced.

8. Meeting Presentation Package – You are not going in to do a huge elaborate presentation; because you don’t know what they need yet. Remember, your job is to find out what they need. Rule for first meetings is 80% listening and 20% talking. You may also, at this time, introduce some additional information on your company.

9. Proposal – Could be in written form and sent in or preferably presented in person. Either way you have a limited amount of attention from your audience. When in person you have a limited amount of physical time. Ask how long you have before you get there. Avoid unnecessary background, review the opportunity and get to the point quickly. Backup data and more information on your company can be included in the written proposal. If the audience wants to know more they will ask or review it later.

10. (A) First Job - Congratulations, remember it is an opportunity to prove yourself, don’t blow it. Follow-up make sure everything went well. Many unhappy customers won’t tell you. They just stop calling.

(B) No Immediate Need – Track prospect send newsletters etc. Circumstances change. Your job is to get on their shopping list, preferably at the top.

11. Ongoing Relationship – Introduce new products/or services keep in touch. It’s your responsibility to stay top of mind with them. Out of Sight Out of Mind.

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