All relationships, both business and personal, have common pillars including, but not limited to trust. Business relationships are unique in that they also require transparency and consistency. However, these qualities are key to successful relationships. Recent Neuralytix research conducted with US reselling partners shows trust to be missing across the board, for products, services and all vendors.
Partners believe that the vendors do not understand their business. Typical comments from partners included “No one has walked in the partner’s shoes or, if they did, they weren’t paying attention”, and “No one has my back.”
One partner said, “Vendors view this distrust as partners being disloyal.” Another partner, who moved from a senior position at a vendor to the channel said it best, “If I knew then, what I know now, I would have done things differently!”