Out and about – how much Time & Effort do you spend on Partners
Januar 25, 2011 in Help Wanted
So it’s my favorite little spot behind the money facades just off of Zurich’s Paradeplatz. And it’s yet another evening I spend with business partners that harbor the same dream as anvalad’s partners. Creating a mutually and financially beneficial business relationship with complementary products, skills and networks. Most likely you have spend enough hours planning and executing similar strategies and implementing co-operations that followed parallel hopes. The following best practices I have summarized over the past three years, after many such co-operations loosing their charm or never ever getting off the ground in the first place:
- Do you like the people involved – if the answer is “no” you might stop right away. Though I have tried for three or four times it never actually worked out even though our mutual products seemed more than fit for a joint marketing and sales strategy
- Do you really! know the product – if the answer is “no” you might stop again. And I didn’t put that exclamation mark in for good measure – you really have to spend more time with the product or service that you going to pitch to your trusted customers than with the people involved. So any partnership really is more of an investment than a couple of dinner checks and some happy hour shouting over the crowd.
- Do you see any results hands-on – this one I usually give 30 – 60 days depending on the product complexity or service turnaround involved. But if you don’t have some promising leads or a true project after the first working sessions it is not likely that your client roosters are going to help you in a partnering context.
I’d be glad to hear from some fellow readers out there, what their best practices sound like. When have you made a business partnership a true commercial success? I’ll keep you posted on ours…
Paperblog: Das Beste aus Blogs
Technorati