Though there are many exciting, new businesses to partner with, it’s easy and more profitable to choose the right one. Here’s how.
2014 was a great year for startups geared toward enhancing consumer convenience through mobile devices. In fact, consumer tech was the obvious business focus that startup founders seemed to take the most interest in. Some of the new companies help consumers:
- Shop conveniently online and in stores,
- Order to-go services like beauty and shipping,
- Enhance their social media options and experiences, and
- Make technology simple and accessible, (think design your own app and enhancing business communications)
For business-minded people, the idea of teaming up with forward-moving companies is extremely exciting. However, what’s the best way to choose who to partner with?
Entrepreneurial-minded executives often see dollar signs everywhere. However, it’s crucial to make business decisions with focus and direction in mind. Yes, there are possibilities for business growth in every alliance. However, it typically takes time to build up to that return.
Knowing Your Goals
When choosing an alliance partner, step back from all that you see and look closely at what your corporation needs most.
Business alliances mainly:
- Build your reputation,
- Expand your market share,
- Give you access to new distribution channels, and
- Give you access to more resources, (financial, technological or otherwise),
Therefore, you should focus on achieving a very specific goal or set of goals. Once you’ve decided what specific goal(s) you want to achieve, you can clearly see exactly what potential business alliances can, (under the right conditions), improve your brand.
The right company will:
- Compliment your brand and company culture,
- Have a healthy, stable business foundation without a lot of debt,
- Have a good reputation and management team
- Perform reasonably well financially,
- Be free of credit problems, and
- Be comfortable with the same type of contractual structure you are
Other Considerations
Brand Values – Even when all the obvious pieces fit, your brand values might not. Because of this, brand values are something you should evaluate early on in your background checks of the company.
For example, any company partnering with Chick-Fil-A should understand that the company founders are Christian and don’t open on Sundays. They also make faith-based decisions in several other areas as well. However, this isn’t obvious to the public, and may not make a difference to the consumers.
Perhaps the company makes questionable or immoral decisions:
- Is the company outsourcing work and underpaying workers from other countries?
- Do they produce products that are unsafe and of poor quality?
Mismatched values can become incredibly frustrating over time. They could also destroy your reputation and cause you to lose part of your customer base.
Agreements –
- Does the company have an open door policy with staff, leaving your business information vulnerable?
- What other strategic alliances are they part of?
- Could any of those contracts affect your business?
- Perhaps they’re working with a logistics company that uses biased hiring practices, or that doesn’t handle products with care.
Contact us at 3rd Eagle. We can guide you through the entire joint venture process. Good joint ventures don’t have to be few and far between, they can be part of your daily business.