How To Create Win-Win Strategic Partnerships

Startups and SMEs often need help to grow. Complex and highly competitive market scenarios make it difficult for any single small-scale business to survive the marketing onslaught induced by the corporate and other powerful players. Deterrents such as paucity of funds, limited resources, lack of essential business knowledge and time constraints can prevent small organizations from proliferating and justifying their existence. However, even after considering all the difficulties and stumbling blocks, businesses still have to survive and are required to churn out profits despite all odds to keep the stakeholders happy and interested with further funding activities. How can small businesses achieve this?

A way out is to forge strategic business partnerships with bigger players in the market and create an opportunity to grow your customer base. The main thought behind building an alliance is to create a true synergy between the two entities and make one plus one equal five instead of two. However, gaining new customers is not the main reasons for forming such partnerships. The focus can be to streamline operations, develop a new range of better products having a higher business value in the market, improve upon your services quality, or simply outsource certain tech activities to reduce your operational overheads and enhance your ROIs.

Here’re are some tips to get you going.

Look beyond what’s on the table

Businesses fundamentally operate upon the scarcity-abundance principle. On one side there’s a need to consume a particular product or service in the market, and on the other side there’re people wanting to fulfill that demand. You could be from the “consuming” side and desire reduced buying costs to improve your margins. Or you could be from the “supply” side and push for higher selling costs. For a partnership to form it is imperative that both the sides benefit from the alliance. So you might be required to compromise upon certain aspects to make your partnership happen.

Evaluate yourself in a proper manner

People enter into partnerships when they feel they lack in certain business aspects and need help to grow. Typically, in such scenarios, the party initiating the partnership often feels it doesn’t’ have enough value on its own and is therefore inferior. It plays upon your psyche and hinders you from pushing forward your advantages and KPIs during the negotiations. It’s guaranteed to burn you in the end since the other party is most likely to capitalize upon you lack of aggressiveness. So it’s advised to value your plus points, however small they might be, and be very honest with yourself and the joining party regarding what values you bring to the negotiation table, why you’re interested in the partnership, what you can offer and what you expect to gain. It also does not mean you need to hash out your business plan or change your vision or objectives to “suit” the alliance – You need to be clear about your business journey and have confidence on your products. Don’t devaluate or rule out yourself just because you have less to offer.

Understand your potential partner’s needs

If you need someone, chances are the other person might need you too. The very fact that the other person is ready to listen to you indicates there’s something for him or her to gain from your partnership. So carry out a discreet search and try to find out why the person’s interested. It could help you gain valuable insights for negotiations. You could also use this information to present lucrative proposals to further strengthen your deal. Also, don’t hesitate to ask the person on face why he or she wants to connect with you and what he or she hopes to gain from the partnership.

Have something in common

You can’t form a partnership unless you share something in common. It could be business needs, a vision, talent or almost anything. Business people come from different backgrounds and have their own strengths and weaknesses. Best partnerships are formed when... Read more.

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