It is so important in your personal life and in business to build new relationships and to continue to grow and nurture the relationships you already have. I meet with other small business owners daily and have identified a number of key elements to maintaining a good relationship with your suppliers and your customers.

1. Communication: In order to have a strong relationship you must build an environment where communication can flourish. The only way to determine how the other person or business is feeling is by opening meaningful dialogues. It is also important to have constant communication to ensure your business is still meeting the needs and expectations of your clients.
2. Trust: A good relationship needs to be built on trust. Without trust the ability to collaborate and work effectively is compromised, and can trigger the end of a relationship.
3. Honesty: Being honest is integral to building long standing relationships, if you are deceitful and need to lie, or bend the truth to get ahead, it will ALWAYS come back to bite you.
4. Integrity: walking your talk (having alignment between your words and actions); taking your promises seriously and working like heck to keep them not only to the other person but also to yourself.
5. Sincerity - demonstrating caring and unconditional positive regard to other person's point of view, even if you disagree with their perspective.
6. Mutual Respect: always talking to and dealing with others as equals and never as if they were lesser than or greater than you; i.e., never criticizing them or belittling yourself; saying what you agree with before you say what you disagree with; never laying blaming nor creating guilt, etc.
7. Reliability:  being consistent in your behaviour or in your way of being or acting; being someone others can depend on in fulfilling commitments.
8. Competency: demonstrating your knowledge and know-how around matters of importance to the other person; also demonstrating your ability to get to what is most important to the other person and in being able to differentiate your point of view from theirs.

At Leddy’s and Associates we believe that building good relationships is fundamental to the success of your business and ours. There is nothing more important than the way you conduct yourself, especially in business. If you want an accountant who embodies all of the above points and truly values you, call us today.