Service partnerships can be the most dynamic and effective way of having a more successful business and fulfilling life, you just need to pick the right partner.
A simple definition of a good business partnership is one that combines two individual parts to make a fuller whole. Partnerships open us up to the experiences of others, allow us to share our expertise and combine strengths. Leveraging a partnership helps expand your potential and gives you more time to focus on your business.
Finding Your Match
Like partnerships in life, business partnerships should be mutually beneficial, with a shared respect and desire to grow. But there is no ‘swipe right’ app for finding a good service partnership. Business owners who recognize they could be more successful and might be in need of a strategic partnership should talk to other business owners about how they achieved success. Talk to their team about what they feel is missing from the business and what could be improved. Once you have some clarity, find partners who have talents you need and can’t find internally. Find partners that are eager to work with you. From financial services, to creative, to human resources, there are helpful partnerships for every facet of business.
Talk Talk Talk – How to Kick-Start A Strong Partnership
The early stages of working with your partners should start with a lot of discussion and questions. Talk openly about what your strengths and weaknesses are. Talk about where you see this partnership being one year from now. Open up about past partnerships, things that worked, things that didn’t work. Having a wide-ranging open discussion will allow things to bubble to the surface that otherwise may not have. At the end of that conversation, make sure they are ‘speaking your language’.
Have a Plan and then Hit Refresh
To get started you have to have a game plan. Everyone should be aware of the rules, scoring and boundaries. No handshake plans here, make sure it is written down. This is your strategy. Your strategy should include the goals and expectations for the partnership and a way to measure your results. As an example, in our creative partnerships, goals can be to get more leads through a website, to design a more attractive package for a product, to rebrand an aging company, to build a more inclusive social media following. For whatever your goals may be, plan all the steps you will take to get there, define how long each step will take and ultimately how you will measure the success of each goal. Once you have started to work together, plan on updating and being flexible as new challenges and opportunities arise and cause shifts in your original strategy.
Always Be Present
It is important that neither side enters into a partnership unless they have the time to devote to it. Partnerships that start on a good footing can go awry when one of the parties is not equally committed. That can show up in many ways like not providing timely feedback, not freeing up time to meet or not being open to the other’s ideas.
Our Partnerships
At AR Design, we create partnerships to make a business more engaging, more trustworthy, more visible, more likeable. Our clients bring their unique services, goods, industry experience, and business goals. With a clear plan and open communication our partnerships continue to grow stronger and become more fulfilling. We learn to navigate each other’s way of working and build upon that to make the experience and outcome what all partnerships should be: fun and profitable.