Ask yourself this question: At your last meeting with a client, who was your employer, the client firm or your firm?  Is the answer easy?  Not if the two firms are partners.  Partnerships uproot all of the assumptions of the traditional seller/buyer relationship.

What exactly is a partnership?  Let's start at the beginning.

Remember the old traveling salesman with his sample case, knocking on door after door, hoping for a chnace to start his well-rehearsed, mind entangling sales pitch?  If enough doors were opened, enough pitches launched, he'd be able to notch a few sales.

Then came the "customer-focused" revolution, which in broad terms was based on a simple idea: selling the customers something they NEED.  The rules changed a bit.  Finding out what customers needed could be complex.  But the basic game remained the same: selling goods and services.

Partnership is a whole new game.  While customer-focused sales center around transaction (the sale), partnership centers around the relationship, a relationship in which you'll be asked to share risks and rewards, and gains and losses, with customers.  Sounds lofty but unrealistic?  This summary will show you in detail how it's done.  You'll learn how to:

Partner companies share business goals, teams of employees, and competitive tools.  So which firm do you work for?

Consultant Larry Wilson founded the Pecos River Learning Center.  Hersch Wilson is the lead facilitator at the center.

Global competition has changed all the rules of competition.  Loyal customers, lower prices, and product innovations are no longer keys to making a sale.  With the luxury of choice, customers are fickle and demanding -- and knowledgeable enough to make their own decisions between competing products.  And competitors can quickly match lower prices or product innovations.

As global competition brings new challenges, technology brings new solutions.  Telephones, faxes, and computers connect companies to customers and potential customers at a fraction of the cost (and time!) of the salesperson in the car or plane.  Telesales are replacing direct sales.

The traditional sales force is dying.  the function and methods of the salesperson have been made obsolete by technology, competition, and the customers.

And yet in the new competitve market, finding and keeping customers are more vital than ever to survival of the business.  Organizations realize that sales are the essence of business.  Chief executives are realizing that their jobs are not to grow shareholder value or finance acquisitions, but to sell their products to customers.  Without sales there is no business.

The model of the traditional salesperson is dying not because sales are less important today, but because sales are so important that they can no longer be the responsbility of one person or one unit in the company.  One salesperson cannot fulfill the expectations and requirements of his or her customers.  The entire organization must be involved.  No longer a transaction between salesperson and customer, sales have become a full partnership between the seller's and the buyer's organizations.  Establishing partnerships, not selling products or services, is the new function of sales.

Think of products in three broad categories.

In today's highly competitive world, all products are quickly commodities. Partnerships, not innovative products, will help you keep customers.

In the old days, sales were battles, battles with competing salespeople, but also battles with customers.  It's not that salespeople were trying to hurt their customers' interests.  They just didn't care.  Their goal was to sell their products, so the customers' interests were a non-factor in the equation. Salespeople won the battles with their ability to motivate, cajole, and influence customers, pushing them to buy the product.

More recently, a new tactic has appeared: the problem- solving method.  "I'm here to help," the salesperson says.  "You've got a problem, I'll solve it." Sounds good, and in many cases the salesperson is sincere.  But the end goal is still the same: selling the product.  Solve a problem, get a commission; solve more problems, get more commissions.  Volume is still the key.  And where volume drives the relationship, there's no partnership. It's just the bad old ways done up nicely.

Traditional customer relationships won't survive the pressures of today's competitive world.  Only partnerships with your customers will keep them happy and loyal.  But what do partnerships look like?

Good ones are like marriages, long-term, strategic, value- based, and interdependant.

Are you married to your customers?  Ask yourself these questions:

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Wal-Mart was Procter & Gamble's biggest customer.  Twelve P&G divisions called on Wal-Mart regularly -- in a totally uncoordinated effort. And no top manager from on company had ever dealt with a top manager of the other company.

Till Lou Pritchett, P&G's Vice President for Worldwide Sales, stepped in.  He called Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton directly.  Walton said he didn't do business very well in his office and invited Pritchett on a now- legendary canoe trip down Arkansas's South Fork River.

On the river, the two high-powered executives decided to break away from twenty years of short- term adverserial confrontation and move toward a partnership built on trust and a shared vision.  They started by creating Wal- Mart/P&G teams focused on one goal: driving cost out of the relationship.  Today the companies are so "married" that seventy-five P&G employees work permanently in Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters.

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Remember the old catch phrase, "the customer is king?"  That's hardly true in the traditional company.  The trust is, the boss is king.

The traditional company is a control-oriented military type of ogranization with layers of bosses -- each controlling subordinates.  Fear drives the employees, fear of losing their jobs or upsetting their bosses.  The ultimate customer for most employees is not the outside client, but the man or woman who can make or break them: the boss.

In this kind of company, how can you focus on customers?

The customer-keeping company shakes up the military model by organizing around customers, not around the hierarchy.  For the entire organization, the most important individuals aren't the bosses, they're the customers.

Customer-keeping companies:

Skills, knowledge, and experience have always been key ingredients to succeeding in business.  But in today's shifting environment, when the rules of the sales game are constantly changing, these attributes aren't enough.  You're trying to build new and strong, partnering relationships while dealing with the challenges thrown at you by demanding, sophisticated customers.

You can't survive without courage and creativity, which together constitute the ability to "play to win."  Playing to win means being an advenurous and innovative thinkier, somone willing to take risks.

How do you play to win?  First by not "playing not to lose."

Playing not to lose is a life strategy centered around not taking risks and not being uncomfortable.  Playing not to lose is an avoidance strategy, driven by four basic fears:

Playing to win doesn't refer to winning in the conventional sense.  If you win, someone doesn't have to lose.  Playing to win means going as far as you can with all that you've got.  It means choosing to take risks, to seek challenges, to endure emotional discomfort if it's necessary.

Playing not to lose may be more comfortable in the short term, but you won't be learning anything, you won't be growing or advancing.  In the long run you lose, because it is the creative and courageous players who will find the new solutions, who will discover the new opportuntities.  And who will have answers to bring to their customers.

To play to win you have to decide what you stand for and what you want out of life.  Ask yourself these questions:

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At the Pecos River Learning Center in rural New Mexico, Larry Wilson combines classroom experiences with rugged outdoor activities to help individuals and organizations face challenges and change.

In an activity called the Pole, participants -- safely secured in harnesses attached to three safety ropes held by teammates -- are asked to climb a twenty five foot telephone pole to the to, jump off, and let themselves be lowered to the ground by their teammates.  It sounds simply, but participants come away with key lessons about themselves, and others.

The true partnership relationship between customer and seller organization is too complex and in- depth to be handled by one salesperson working with one contact in the client organization.  Partnership means working with teams that cut across both companies and across differenct functions within each company.

Instead of being "Lone Rangers," today's best salespeople are team builders - experts at bringing together people from all over organizations, with different opinions, ideas, backgrounds, and motivations.

In a radical change from traditional working relationships, these team members will have to learn the sacrifices and rewards of working together rather than competing.

Our culture emphasizes and rewards competition to the extent that it has become the natural reflex for many of us.  Divide a group of people into two teams and, even it they are working on similar tasks, the two teams immediately enter into a competitive battle.  Rarely will one team ask the other for help, or even try to learn from observing the other team's solutions.  (In school that's called cheating.)

Competition is indeed a driving force behind business success and one way of motivating people and solving problems.  The danger is in believing it is the only way.

Today, collaboration is the key tool that leads, ultimately, to competitive advantage.

Boston University Hospital used to have the traditional seller vs. customer battles when dealing with their suppliers.  "Suppliers would try to sell something at the highest possible price, and we would try to get the lowest possible price," says Nancy Hallgren, BU Hospital's purchasing manager.

Things changed when the hospital established a partnership with Baxter Healthcare, the $8 billion hospital and medical equipment supplier.  Baxter has been a pioneer in building team-based relationships with its customers.

Baxter and BU Hospital created a team with members from both companies as well as from the hospital's customers.  The team meets weekly at the hospital.

"Now Baxter and our hospital staff are working closely together to solve a whole range of problems that we have," Hallgren says.  "The meetings are casual, off the cuff, and focused on solving problems and developing solutions."

One problem occurred when the hospital replaced the hall carpeting with tiles.  Baxter carts that the hospital was using to deliver solutions immediately tore up the tiles. The hospital brought the problem to the team.  The Baxter team members decided to buy new carts for the hospital at their own expense because they wanted to solve the problem.

"In the past, it would have been our problem, we would have had to figure it out," says Hallgren.  "Now we can work it out together with more ideas and resources. That's the difference a team can make."

Kodak's Team Zebra (members were from the company's black-and-white film division) cut the customer order-to- delivery time from forty-one to thirteen days.

The key to its success:

High-performance teams have three critical characteristics:

Long-term relationships are dynamic, not static.  They are constantly changing, constantly getting stronger or weaker.  If you let a relationship stagnate, it will grow weaker and eventually die.

Partnerships need "routine maintainance"; they need daily attention and work.  The routine maintainance of partnership involves a belief, a mind-set, and three strategies.  Here is a checklist of things to do every day to keep partnerships growing.

Every day, reevaluate your performance in the partnership.  How can we improve our service?  What can we do better?  How can we be easier to deal with?  How can we drive out unnecessary costs? What have we learned?  What can we improve?

The Pecos River Learning Center uses a method called the Stratefic Partnering Process to help customers and suppliers improve their partnerships.  This process is built around six questions:

In the traditional transactions relationship between seller and buyer, the salesperson was simply a supplier of goods or services.  You establish new customer relationships when you move beyond the traditional role of supplier to take on a role of driving business results.

Value-adding is not providing a superior product or service -- today this is expected.  You add value by helping customers reach their business goals.

The difference is in thinking strategically.  Before only three players counted: you, your customer, and your competitor.  Now you must take the perspective of the customer: You must include the customer's customers and the customer's competitor in the picture. With this larger perspective, you can then become the ally of the customer and help develop the strategies to achieve its goals.

The learn and understand the business environment of your customer, to gain its perspective on its business, you have to do your homework.  That means reading anything you can about your customer and its business.  Even more important, find the right people and ask them the right questions.  Get them to talk. Take them out to lunch and let them tell you stories about the business. Cover the spectrum, from management to salesperson, from inside the company and out (non-competing suppliers, for example). Soon you'll have gathered enough information to answer the key business questions: What business is your customer really in? Who are its competitors? How does your customer make money? How does it lose money?  What are its major cost areas?  Who are your customers customers and what do they expect?  What keeps your customer up at night?

You can't solve the customer's business problem's, and you can't think strategically about the customer's business if you can't speak the financial language.

At this level of interaction, you need to understand not only the terms but the impact of financial indicators.  What causes pre-tax profitability to go up or down?  This is what your customer wants to talk about.

Don't lose sight of the ultimate purpose of any customer's business: economic benefit.  This goal can be broken down into three initiatives: making mone for your customer, saving it money, and adding value to the customer's customer.

After learning everything you can about your customer's business, find out which of these three initiatives, or combinations of them, you and your organization can affect most effectively.

Not all customers are looking for a partner in their supplier.  Broadly speaking, there are three types of buyers:

To determine which customers can be potential partners, try to place them in one of the three categories above.  To do this, ask youself the following five critical questions related to their motivation for buying in general, and buying from you in particular. Compare the answers to the description of the categories above.

It is important to reevaluate your relationships with all of your customers.  In some cases, you may realize that some customres are not worth any of the time or money that you spend on them. In this case, let go of those relationships and concentrate on more profitable partnerships.

Here are some suggestions in your reevaluations:

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Are you allocating the right amount of resources -- time, energy, and money -- to the right customers?

Best-price buyers, for example, are looking for price and convenience.  Have you made the transaction as convenient as possible?  Perhaps fax and phone interactions are all that are needed to fully satisfy these customers.

On the other hand, increasing resources to solution buyers might turn them into partners.  For example, some solution-buyer relationships are very strong - but you are not the only vendor.  To make these buyers partners, you need to convert them to a single source relationship.  Perhaps you can show them how in single- source relationships cross-organizational teams work together to solve customer problems.