Business partnerships are entered into for two main reasons.  Both of these motivations for starting a business partnership are equally important.  

Sometimes you’ll want a business partnership so you can fill a skills gap.  These are the specialty business partners.

Other times you’ll want a business partnership for marketing reasons so you can get access to their clients. This type of business partnership is usually mutually beneficial.  The more you view your business partnership as a two-way street, the better.

Regardless of the reason why you are choosing to start a partnership, you need to analyze your business and figure out what the business partnership will accomplish. This is done in four stages:

Categorize the Types of Business Partnerships

  • Accounting software experts (QuickBooks, Great Plains, Mass 90 )
  • Apple Macintosh specialists
  • CRM specialists
  • Document imaging
  • Legacy host systems
  • Industry-specific software experts (healthcare, hospitality, property/casualty, legal, manufacturing)
  • Security experts (biometrics, smart cards, intrusion detection)
  • Software developers
  • System building
  • Wholesalers and distributors

Identify Specialty Skills

  • List out what virtual IT products you need a business partnership for – identify the skills gap you think each business partner will fill in
  • Identify the specialty skills that a business partner must have according to what a client would need

Explore Marketing Value

  • List the kind of clients each potential business partnership would have
  • Describe the value you would get from the business partnership from gaining access to their clients
  • Identify how many of these potential business partnerships would have sweet spot clients

Locating Business Partnerships

  • List the types of organizations and groups a potential business partner would join
  • What conferences do they tend to go to?
  • What news groups do they hang out at?  

Bottom Line on Business Partnerships
Business Partnerships should benefit both parties.  When you are determining who to form a business partnership with, you need to determine the best partnership for you based on the partnership firm’s skills and their access to sweet spot clients.  After that you figure out how to meet up with the decision makers and explore the possibility of a business partnership.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Business Partnerships. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Business Partnerships, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.