May 3 2007 1:51PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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Through the years I have watched hundreds of builders develop and implement partnering strategies with and for their trade contractors and local suppliers and, for the most part, they have been pretty successful.  However, I marvel at the fact that there are a very few builders who strive to develop these same partnering strategies with major building material manufacturers.  This has always intrigued me and I guess both builders and manufacturers have under estimated the power of developing partnerships with each other. 

Oh sure, some national builders try to disguise a rebate program under the name of a partnering program but at the end of the day it is an attempt to gain the lowest price from the manufacturer.  When I talk of a partnership between home builders and manufacturers I am talking about a real “win-win” for both parties.  Builders can gain a tremendous amount of information from manufacturers on such things as design trends, consumer preferences, market forecasts as well as product installation and sales training.  And, in turn, manufacturers can test new product concepts and they can gain valuable input to assist them in developing new marketing strategies and programs. 

In my mind a true builder/manufacturer partnership is one that is based on constant communication geared to understand each other’s needs, problems, issues and opportunities and an exploration of how each can help the other to achieve their respective goals.

I would recommend that you go to a great website on partnering it is www.partnerships.org.uk and look under “creating partnerships” and you will get a pretty good understanding of what a genuine partnership consists of.