Making our business relationships work can be just as complex as making our personal relationships work (sometimes).

We at Beckon Business, in our day-to-day Business Coaching find that the focus on both internal relationships and external relationships is increasing.  Most businesses see the return on investment in relationships shows up on the bottom-line.

We often hear from our clients of the benefits that come from developing successful business relationships – and this is what they focus on in-order to build more relationships. However, whilst focussing on the benefits, we can overlook the barriers that might be holding the relationship back from growing.

Of the barriers (we have identified five) the one that personally impacts on me when considering who I will develop a business relationship with is TIME – and time is frequently the barrier we most overlook!

It has the most impact on me because it is the hardest commodity for me to find and therefore the one, I hold most closely!

I work as part of a two-person team and this relationship would never work if my team partner didn’t place the same value on time as I do and respect my time in the same way as I respect his. It is a conversation we had in the very early stages of our partnership and one in which we both had to be clear about expectations on our time inside the business.

Time can be a sticking-point, because interestingly it depends on how you measure it, in the sense that you measure the either the time or the value that comes from the time. In our team, time is measured on value not hours put in. In other words, return on investment for the time used. This works for us and the majority of businesses we work with too.

So, when developing relationships, to overcome the barrier of TIME, measure it by the value you get from the relationship not the hours you spend on it.