Building Partnerships Can Look Easy

When I worked with a team to turn around a small publishing company, one of our strategies was to develop co-publishing partnerships with companies in the U.K. At the time, this hadn’t been done in our part of the industry. Step one required long days of knocking on doors to tell and retell our story.

One by one, my U.K. consultant (and friend) and I did just that. One by one, the publishers with whom we met gave us their confidence. Within a year we had strong relationships with 75% of those we had met during that first tour. During that trip my U.K. friend said, “Give it one year, and they will be coming to you.”

He was right. They were. Suddenly, in a few months I was the hottest game in town.

Other U.S. publishers in my industry started to notice. They wanted those U.K. relationships. U.S. folks began to go to the U.K. to do what I had already done. One of them said to me, “Do you know what it’s like to follow you into the U.K.?”

I answered, “No, but I don’t think I would want to.”

What I knew, and I think most folks hadn’t considered, is that there was considerable planning and groundwork that went into that very first trip that we took. Our goals were clear and our offering was simple, smooth, and the offering was tailored to the U.K. publishers’ way of doing business. In other words, we made it easy and fun to work with us.

What those who followed saw here was something that had been built over 18-months of working together and it looked like something anyone could do without thinking. It was not.

One piece that the U.S. publishers would get was that I had promised my U.K. partners not to treat them the way American publishers usually do.

I promised I would listen and consider their needs as my own.

It’s the same thing that a great business blog does for customers.

No U.S. publisher ever gained the foothold there that we had.

Liz Strauss