Partnerships·
A delegation was coming to study technology, and part of the visit was a 3D printing workshop. I found a shop, spoke with them, and negotiated the terms.
A colleague had found the same shop and called them too. Our boss had put us both on the visit without telling either of us, and we had each gone looking and each arrived at the same place.
What the shop saw
From behind the counter, this was one organization arriving twice with two different sets of terms.
The shop now knew something it should never have learned: that our number was negotiable, and that nobody on our side was clearly in charge of the arrangement.
A better deal is not always a win
I had negotiated the lower price of the two, so on paper mine was the version to take. It is still the wrong outcome.
Whatever we saved, we paid for in credibility. A partner who has seen two prices from the same team will remember that at the next negotiation, and a partner who cannot tell who is in charge is slower to say yes to anything else you bring them.
Goodwill belongs to the partner, not to you
Every partner has a limited amount of patience for being approached, and it is spent per company, not per person. Two calls use it twice as fast.
This is what makes duplication expensive. It is not the wasted hour. It is that the second call is drawn from the same small account as the first, and there is nothing left in it for the ask that actually matters.
Two good searches end up in the same place
This is worth sitting with, because it is the opposite of what it looks like. If two capable people search for the right partner in a small city, they will often find the same one. Convergence is what a good search looks like.
So duplication is the default outcome whenever more than one person is working on the same thing, and it has to be designed out rather than warned against.
The fix is a list, not a meeting
Not a status meeting. A list everyone can see, with three columns: the partner, the person who owns that relationship, and the date of the last contact.
Whoever hands out the work owns that list. Two people were put on the same visit, so the map belonged to the person who assigned it, and it should have existed before either of us made a call.
The rule attached to it is short. Claim a name before you contact it. Write one line back the same day you speak to anyone. If someone else on the team needs to be in that conversation, the owner brings them in, rather than the partner meeting a second stranger from your side.
If it has already happened
Do not sort it out in front of them, and do not let two versions run in parallel.
One person, once, tells the partner plainly: you heard from two of us, I am handling this, and these are the terms we are going with. It is a short and slightly uncomfortable message, and it closes the whole thing.
One organization, or several people
A partner is deciding whether working with you will be easy. Almost everything they use to judge that happens before any work begins: how you write, how fast you answer, whether the second email agrees with the first.
Two people calling the same company answers that question for them, and not in your favor.