The Soft Sell Partnership – What Does that Mean?

In our book, The Heart of Marketing, we say that the buyer/seller relationship should be experienced as a co-creative partnership, both sides creating the transaction spontaneously as they interact with one another.

That’s all well and good, but just what is a partnership? What does it look and feel like and how does it function? 

Most understand partnership from an external reference, that is the division of tasks, or shares, or legally defined commitments and responsibilities usually spelled out in the form of a contract.

But what are the internal elements of a partnership—the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions that make a partnership real and effective?

A partnership, by default, requires at least two people. You can’t be in partnership with yourself.

So a partnership is an exchange of intent and meaning and feeling and energy—each partner giving part of themselves to the transaction to accomplish with and for each other what both want.

Each partner recognizes and respects the other partner as an other, different and unrelated in many ways, but intimately connected though their shared commitments and mutual support.

They are not “One,” neither in an earth-bound nor metaphysical sense, but they are joined by the common aspirations and objectives that live between them and bind them together internally and externally.

It’s not too far to say that they share being with each other—each dedicated to the well-being of the other. A partnership has no meaning without this mutual concern and support.

Each one must understand and accept that they are not self-contained, self-reliant participants but have become members of a joint psyche in which their joining relegates their separate individuality to a second but equal status for the sake of their mutual intentions.

Partners are individuals who have the capacity maintain their sense of individuality—”I”— while simultaneously able to join into a mutual focus and effort—”We”—and to desire and intend the well-being of both members of the partnership as their overriding priority.

Because It’s All in the Connection (a form of partnership),

Judith & Jim

For a guide to spiritually grounded, real life, soft sell marketing from the heart get our new #1 amazon Bestselling book The Heart of Marketing: Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back