Business Development For Dummies

Chapter 19

Seeking Partners for Mutual Benefit

In This Chapter

Maintaining focus

Being happy alone or searching for partners

Creating the foundation for a great partnership

Young or small companies that are struggling to survive often try to hog all the work, keep their costs down and stop others from encroaching on (what they perceive to be) their business. Although superficially understandable, this strategy is shortsighted for all sorts of reasons. After all, you’re willing to use your network to spread the word about your company and recommend people and companies in your network to others (you scratch my back … ). So why not consider doing the same thing where you spot a real, mutual benefit. That’s what partnerships make available to you.

This chapter discusses partnerships as a route to significant business growth. I detail the main types, explain the importance of sticking to your core strengths at all times and supply some high-level considerations to bear in mind when you’re weighing up whether partnering is going to be good for your company – or not.

Partnerships can bring you leads, credibility, access to a wider customer list or additional product or services capabilities ...