Two Key Ways to Increase Your Strategic Alliances Revenue

Keys to Alliance RevenueBusinesses form strategic alliances in order to reap multiple benefits. Most of all, the most obvious benefit is increasing profits. You and the other business work hard to build a strong alliance. Now start looking for extra to ways to build upon your brand strength. As a result of you alliance, your revenue stream and market share increase. Continue reading

Business Alliances: How Coffee And Payment Services Combined For Greater Outcomes

Alliances with your coffee shopWalk into any Starbucks store in the country and become instantly greeted by the welcoming smells of freshly brewed coffee. You may also notice the happy customers going over business plans, reviewing homework, or simply surfing the Internet at their leisure. In general, the customer base of Starbucks is a happy group willing to fork over five dollars or more for their favorite coffee. However, there is always room for improvement.  Continue reading

Increase Channels of Distribution with Better People, Processes and Products

Channels of distribution are some of the most important parts of your business.  If you have positive momentum in distribution, your product/service is constantly in demand and you are making money. If you cannot get distribution, finding customers is difficult and costly and your business is overwhelming.

Fans of The Profit are familiar with the 3P’s of business: People, Process and Product. Continue reading

Pitfalls and Benefits of Strategic Alliances

There’s an old saying that “two heads are better than one,” and it has never been truer than today. There are several benefits to connecting with another company in forming a strategic alliance, the corporate equivalent of putting two heads together.

Leverage knowledge and expertise from another company, without having to hire additional employees

Working together with another company in a formal strategic alliance provides your company access to additional experts, without having to hire them. Continue reading

Why Most Small Businesses Need Power Partners

There are many commercials on TV and on the radio these days that say to call in and tell them about your invention idea. It sounds so easy, yet so campy and shifty at the same time. You’ve decided to market your own product. You’ve invested your own money, (and possibly a little of someone else’s if you’ve been lucky). However, you know deep down that you might not have what it takes to insure the success of this business. It’s the same feeling that made you even listen to that campy, shifty commercial in the first place. You know you need help, but you don’t know where to look or how to get it.

Help for Small Businesses with Good Ideas Continue reading

Alliance Performance Coaching: Which Coach Do You Choose?

With the number of business alliances soaring, alliance performance coaching becomes even more essential.

An article from Forbes talks about why coaching is vital for any partnership. In this piece of literature, the author makes it clear that no matter the past relationships that you have had with your partner, it pays to hire a coach. As he puts it, “Whether or not you knew each other beforehand, launching a business will change your relationship.” Therefore, to thrive in any joint venture, you have to incorporate performance coaching services. However, how do you make certain that the coach you go for will be rewarding for your business?

Continue reading

The “Eight I’s” in Strategic Alliances

There may be no “I” in team, but there is certainly an “I” in strategic alliance. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, author Rosabeth Moss Kanter explains her “Eight I’s That Make We” concept. The article ironically plays with the well-known phrase and suggests that in order to be successful, a company should actually concentrate on the following “I’s” when in a strategic alliance: Continue reading

5 Ways to Collaborate With a Fellow Business

Forming company-client bonds is one of the most important aspects of running a business. Keeping customers coming back will provide you with stability and allow you room for potential growth. Collaboration with fellow businesses is just as important, because it allows you to develop relationships with companies that you can depend on. Continue reading

Channels of Distribution Best Practices

The channels of distribution best practices utilize the warehouse facility as quickly as possible. Moving through the distribution center needs to happen with haste and warehouses are now being referred to as throughput centers. Every center, no matter what it is called, needs a best practices system in place.

1. Use an Advanced Shipping Notification (ASN)

This system finds Continue reading

3 Benefits of Joint Ventures

Launch a business from scratch with Joint Ventures (JV). Countless new business owners are launching new businesses using JV alone, proving to be the active element as to why they experienced success in their business. A partnership between two companies with similar assets is simply leveraged by a “joint venture.” When working through JV ventures, it is important to partner with them and not compete with them.

For instance, you may own a vitamin website and then contact the owner of a wellness website. See if you can leverage marketing your vitamins to the customers of their wellness site. They will say either “yes” or “no.” If the answer is “yes,” then it’s worth every effort when you start to build up your back office easily and experience rapid traffic and sales.

Most recently, Ford and GM have created a Joint Venture to develop new transmissions with 9 speeds for front week drive cars. They are jointly developing a new product for both companies and it won’t be in cars until 2016. Continue reading

How Value Added Resellers (VAR) Make It Work

Becoming a Value Added Reseller (VAR) is a lucrative way to add value and specialization to your product while saving yourself the development costs of manufacturing and developing the add-ons yourself. We’d like to offer you some tips in making this selling program work for you.

The most important thing is to establish yourself Continue reading

Choosing the Best Alliance Management Professional Makes all the Difference in the World

Sometimes it’s tough to go it alone, especially if you’re a small business owner. Because of today’s fast-paced and constantly changing business environment, it’s critical to move quickly to take advantage of opportunities.

Consequently, many business owners are seeking alliance management professionals to help them achieve their business objectives rather than building or buying something new. Continue reading

Famous Strategic Alliances that Paid Off and Changed the World

Strategic alliances are an increasingly common sight in the modern business landscape. A study by Booze-Allen & Hamilton showed 20,000 new alliances formed between 1987 and 1992. One reason for this is the need for brand recognition in a crowded global market and because there have been many success stories of strategic alliances that have helped companies take off. Academics talk of the effectiveness of alliances in terms of game theory, these real life examples are a testament to the success of such a bold business move.

Starbucks and Barnes & Noble

The coffee house and the bookstore. Continue reading

Entrepreneurs Leading With Ideas

Many people think that being business entrepreneurs means you have a new exciting product to offer the world. That may be true in some cases but not in all. The dictionary defines an entrepreneur as a person who organizes and manages a business usually with considerable unique ideas, initiative and risk. Today’s entrepreneur thinks outside of the box. More and more business is becoming global. It is often the idea that is central to success. It is the idea about an old product that often launches a great business.

You do not have to invent a new mousetrap to become the king of pest control. If you have an idea on how to do it better, provide great service and make your customers happy then you are a potentially successful entrepreneur. You just have to take action. Continue reading

Solid Sales Processes is Critical

Sales is a very tough gig. When most people think of sales, they imagine someone who has a “silver tongue” or who is simply good at slick talking people. To be honest, that is not an accurate assumption of what it takes to be successful.

Many business owners leave the future of their business in the hands of their sales staff without really knowing how to train them or what to look for in qualified candidates during the hiring process. So what happens is they end up hiring someone who ends up costing them money rather than making them money? Continue reading

Several Reasons Why You Need Business Alliances

As a business owner, you should always be looking for a way to increase your bottom line. There are different strategies claiming they can help you increase your business, but one that is often overlooked is forming business alliances. This term might be complete Greek to you, so here’s a quick breakdown of what it is. Continue reading

Power Partners: It’s Not What You Know But Who You Know

You may have heard the phrase, “It’s not what you know but who you know.” In most cases that applies to the business world. Developing partnerships and networking to broaden your people base is one important component of being successful in your business. It is defined by whom you know. This is never more true than when building relationships.

Finding your Power Partners is not only about you, it’s about them. Continue reading

How Value Added Resellers (VAR) Can Help You Find More Hours in a Day

As an Entrepreneur what is the one resource you wish you more of right now? I’d be willing to bet the answer is most likely time. If you’re running low on energy there’s always more coffee, right? But, if you find you just don’t have enough time in the day to get everything done what do you do? You can’t add more hours to the clock.

So how do you free up more of your time? Continue reading

Strategic Alliances: Secrets from Fortune 500 for any businesses

You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. When you form a strategic alliance with another company, you get the benefits of leveraging an expertise, product, service or asset that isn’t even yours. Yet, they call on the same customers you do.

Big businesses have been reaping the rewards of these relationships for years. Continue reading

Entrepreneurs: One with the Spirit of Change

There seems to be a growing trend. The number of entrepreneurs is increasing. People, whose life are in an upheaval, discover that their real passions become the fuel that drives their work. This work becomes their source of revenue. There are several reasons for this:

  • Jobs, thought to be stable careers, are no longer jobs to be counted on for life. Continue reading