Blog " What is the secret to successful B2B partnerships today?
Sales is an art, as became clear from our latest piece with the director of the digital agency SFC, Vasil YanevAn art that today has full freedom to embrace creativity and take advantage of a wide palette of tools and opportunities for brand positioning, increasing visibility, and building lasting relationships with the end consumer. Over the past decade, numerous analysts, marketers, and entrepreneurs have shared examples of various effective practices for boosting sales. Less attention is paid, however, to another, no less important aspect of the sales cycle – namely, relationships within the business. Can these relationships rely on creativity? How do these connections develop, and what are the key factors for successful B2B practices? How important is the “shelf life” of partnerships between businesses? We explore the answers to these questions in our conversation with Andrean Borisov, co-founder of the Sales Club Conference and managing partner at Codexio, who for more than six years has been dedicated precisely to these relationships – business-to-business connections.
Hello Andrean, it is a pleasure for us to have you share your accumulated experience in building long-term business partnerships. You began developing these skills back in 2015 as part of a large international organization whose main mission was to help people find their next career opportunity. Recently, Codexio celebrated its sixth anniversary, where, as managing partner, you continue to be responsible for the company’s successful business relationships.
The business ecosystem in our country is becoming increasingly dynamic and constantly evolving. What are the factors that have given a new direction to the development of long-term partnerships? And why are they crucial for every business, regardless of the segment in which it operates?
Environmental factors shouldn’t change a partnership if it is built on a solid foundation. Many circumstances have shifted recently, but my personal experience shows that these very changes create opportunities for strong professional relationships to be reinforced and deepened. After all, we partner with people – our colleagues, our subcontractors, even our competitors. Whatever role we find ourselves in, we are building these types of relationships with individuals. In other words, we are the ones constructing the bridges between us. Even if we change our direction, the partnership remains.
The relationship between businesses and consumers has undergone many metamorphoses, driven by external events and circumstances. But can the B2B symbiosis still be preserved, and what kind of dynamics is it subjected to?
Some of these factors were external, others were not. The economic environment in recent years has been quite dynamic and, I would say, unstable. Everything indicates that this trend is unlikely to change in 2024. To some extent, this also affects the symbiosis and trust in business relationships, which likewise become unstable, following the dynamics of the environment. Despite these challenges, from my experience as an employer and entrepreneur in various industries, B2B partnerships in a dynamic environment remain one of the main tools businesses successfully leverage to adapt to change.
What are the “secrets” that help a partnership remain long-term? This question is especially relevant in today’s reality, where the dynamics of the environment can change circumstances in an instant.
The secret has always been the same: the approach you take. Every business goes through difficult moments – sometimes due to external factors, other times because of internal circumstances that appear in an entrepreneur’s path without warning. When you prioritize a good approach, whether within your company or with your partners, it works in your favor, especially in times of crisis. It is precisely in these situations that you can see how successfully you have built stable business – and even personal – relationships.
The conditions of the environment undoubtedly transform the business ecosystem, but they also affect each of us individually. What are the skills that entrepreneurs had to quickly learn, improve, and acquire in order to remain competitive as the driving force behind their own businesses??
Digitalization is a process that has long been transforming everything around us, including ourselves. Your business cannot grow if you’re still writing things down in a notebook, so to speak. Of course, the notebook is a good friend of ours, and there are still many of us who trust it in daily life. But the rapid development of technology provides us with numerous new opportunities to optimize processes, as well as more diverse ways to handle and manage all kinds of tasks. If you want to remain competitive, you need to move along with this wave. New technologies create new practices and even transform the daily operational duties of many professions. From this comes, first and foremost, the need for adaptability: being open, embracing the new, and being creative, even innovative. These may sound like “clichéd” skills, but they are critically important if you want to continue as an entrepreneur keeping pace with the business ecosystem – and also to continue developing personally.
Artificial intelligence has proven fully capable of supporting and assisting operational processes. But does this tool have a place when it comes to creating, developing, and maintaining long-term, successful business partnerships?
First of all, it is important to consider the environment in which a business operates. A well-articulated theory is not always relevant in practice; there are often discrepancies. For example, if something works very well in the U.S., it has a long way to go before it can succeed in Bulgaria and across Eastern Europe.
In my opinion, artificial intelligence is also on this long journey. Some industries have successfully implemented its use for operational work in daily processes. In others, more time is needed, as well as adaptation of the environment and alignment of specialists with the new opportunities that AI presents.
AI is definitely a great help. Its use improves seemingly simple processes, identifies unforeseen issues, and saves a considerable amount of stress. From there, we can talk not only about improving work, relationships, and processes, but also about enhancing quality of life and gaining more time – which turns out to be the most valuable resource for all of us. This, in turn, allows us to focus more on our partnerships and our relationships with other businesses, entrepreneurs, colleagues, and teams.
In other words, from the perspective of business partnerships, AI is the tool that allows us to redirect human attention and effort, reducing and optimizing operational and daily processes. However, it does not replace the human factor itself.
And what role do social channels, such as LinkedIn, play in creating these types of partnerships and turning them into successful, long-term business relationships? Today, entrepreneurs have full freedom to position their products and services in the digital space and reach a wider audience, but does this apply when one business needs to connect with another?
We live in a digital era, but it’s important to remember that we are living beings, not digital bots. Online sales, marketing, and other digital tools should certainly continue to develop, but not everything should be digital. The impact of the COVID pandemic on the human psyche reinforced my personal belief that face-to-face meetings, conference attendance, trade shows, and seminars are invaluable. They allow the exchange of experience and best practices, the creation of new partnerships, and the strengthening of existing ones. After all, a meeting through a camera and a personal meeting create very different feelings, impressions, and effects.
And one last, but certainly not least, question: how and where do we seek and create new business partnerships today, and what are the conditions for them to become successful?
I’m certainly repeating myself, but traditional forms of communication are far from obsolete. This year, live events are experiencing a true renaissance. The business community has its seminars, meetings, conferences, various training sessions, award evenings, and all kinds of other occasions where we meet, get to know new partners, and reconnect with familiar faces to explore new directions.
Social networks help you navigate, connect with someone, exchange contacts, and set up meetings. I would say they are a tool for communication between businesses and their representatives. But one of the conditions for creating a solid business partnership is an adequate presentation. Only then can you establish trust with the other party. At the same time, we must not forget the attitude you maintain over the long term toward your partner through the series of real-life situations that occur within the business ecosystem. It is precisely a good attitude that serves as the bond after two businesses connect, regardless of how or where the partnership was established.
