GROWING YOUR BUSINESS: Finding a great strategic partner

by Dan Beaulieu
Business consultant

No matter what your customers ask, always find a way to help them. If they ask for something that you don’t normally do, then find a way to do it. IF it is a service that you don’t or cannot possibly do then find someone who can provide that service and either partner with them to provide your customer what she needs or introduce them to the customers. Regardless, the role of any service company is to be helpful in any way that we can.

Here are a few examples:

You run a successful landscaping company and your customer’s fence is in need of repair or replacement. This is not something that you do, but you know someone who does. It’s in your best interest to make the introduction. Actually, you have a choice of either making the introduction or acting as the prime contractors and handle the fence repair company as your subcontractor. Thus, not only servicing your customer but expanding your business and your revenue as well.

You run a car repair shop specializing in revitalizing classic automobiles. Your company handles all the mechanical and electrical as well as the body work, but you don’t do interiors; upholstery and such. That’s when you find the best upholstery and interior rehab and you partner with them making you a full service provider. Your customer benefits, your new partner benefits, and your company benefits, it’s a win, win, win situation and it does not get any better than that.

These kinds of partnerships all start out with you trying to meet your customers’ needs in the best way you can.

The best result of these kinds of strategic thinking is that it will allow you to scale your business well beyond your own in house capabilities.

The second best part of this is that as you start partnering with more strategic partners, they in turn will provide you with some business opportunities, as well. This will be additional business that you don’t have to take the time to chase.

When you share with strategic complementary businesses you all grow and profit to the point where you all get much more stable and stronger.

But the key is to find the right partners. Here are a few suggestions for what to look for when looking for the right partners

• Make sure they are the very best at what they do. They are going to be representing you, so you want to offer your customers the best in the business.
• Make sure they have the same values, ethics, and morals. If not, this will not work.
• Make sure there is the right chemistry between your companies. You can partner with the very best company in the world but if you don’t get along it will not work.
• Make sure they “allow you to be generous”. You want a partner who is truly going to look out for you as much as you want to look out for him. If your partner is always measuring and comparing both of your contributions to combined business effort, that will not work.

Always remember that a true partnership is when entities come together and accomplish things far greater combined than they could individually.

Developing true synergistic cooperative partnership is one of the best ways to make your customers happy and, yes, of course, grow your business.