Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships: How to Become More Productive, Effective and Influential

by Sallie Sherman, Joseph Sperry

What's your most valuable corporate asset?
BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS

""Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships" goes beyond the usual bonhomie, grip-and-grin, back slapping . . . dimension of business relationships. This book outlines a fresh, more systematic perspective to an area usually thought of as the 'soft' side of business."
--From the Foreword by Bradley J. Mitchell, former Chief Commercial Officer, AccuWeather

Whatever business you're in, success often depends on relationships--whether the relationship is between two team members, among several divisions of a corporation, or when it spans a large network of suppliers and customers. For almost three decades Sallie Sherman, Joseph Sperry and, more recently, Steve Vucelich have been helping companies increase revenues, reduce costs, and lower risk by helping firms optimize their B2B relationships.

"Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships" is a game-changing guide that will help you leverage every critical relationship in your organization for greater success. The authors combine their knowledge and experience to show you how to get maximum value from virtually every relationship--both internal and external.

You'll learn how to spot those relationships that are not generating their full power--and turn them into drivers of profit and growth. You'll discover new ways to eliminate barriers to performance and boost the energy of individuals, teams, groups, and your organization as a whole. And you'll find out how to improve personal and managerial development by using "Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships" Key #1: Connect first, then focus on task Key #2: Learn by walking in another's shoes Key #3: Whether people trust you is often up to you Key #4: Share information to increase your personal power Key #5: Manage yourself before you manage others

The authors present proven best practices that individuals and firms can use to form more empowering relationships. They show you how to identify and remove barriers to relationships in your company, whether they are caused by culture, infrastructure, or self-awareness gaps.

If you want to be more productive, effective, and influential, you have to begin thinking in terms of relationships. Globalization, quality movements, increasing numbers of M&A and strategic partnerships, and the rise of social media have made relationships the new business imperative.

Your company's most valuable asset may be dormant. Learn how to tap into it and extract its maximum value with "Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships."

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[David McClendon, Sr · Rating 4 out of 5]

As anyone who is in any type of business is aware, relationships with others are important when it comes to business.

Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships will help the reader identify what relationships they have and how to effectively deal with them.

This book is well-written while not necessarily very engaging to the reader. It isn’t one of those business books that holds the reader’s interest. However, it does contain a lot of helpful information.

We give Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships four stars. It is very informative, but lacks a little on style in that it isn’t particularly entertaining.


We were sent a complimentary copy of this book. We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.

We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Five Keys to Powerful Business Relationships: How to Become More Productive, Effective, and Influential' by Sallie Sherman, Joseph Sperr and Steve Vucelich tells us that building good relationships in business is important. It's something that would seem to be obvious, but based on my business dealings, it would appear not to be the case.

Business books seem to like to give us numbered lists and prescriptions and this one is no different. We get five keys introduced, then each one gets it's own chapter filled with anecdotes, evidence and a nice summary for review. Among the keys, we learn the importance of empathy, connecting to others before we start a task, and trust, among other things. Again, it should be obvious, because we know these things in our personal lives, but perhaps the workaday world of business provides to much focus on things like the bottom line. It's good information and presented readably enough.

There are additional chapters on building relationships online with social media and three challenges are given to leaders for building relationships in business. There is a nice annotated bibliography for specific further reading as well as a general, larger bibliography and chapter notes. I read a lot of business books. I look for readability and applicability. This book had both.

I received a review copy of this ebook from McGraw-Hill Professional and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.