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Spotting Opportunity

Networking and community involvement allows new and established businesses to make connections that may help both grow and evolve. As business owners (be them nonprofit or for profit entities), we are looking for ways to improve our bottom line. Partnerships are a key strategy for making that happen.

While partnering with other businesses represents an opportunity for your organization, it can be difficult to spot good options. Use these tested methods to make the most of every opportunity for your business.

  1. Look locally. Local connections are important for your primary customer/constituent pool. Creating strong bonds with local partners strengthens both organizations and provides seamless and timely opportunities not available with out of state partnerships.
  2. Seek to compliment your product/service line. While it may seem obvious that you should partner with businesses in your same industry, finding a partner with a complimentary product/service outside of your immediate product/service provides the best opportunities for each partner. You can utilize each other’s customer base as new potential clients and use your increased capacity to move up in the market.
  3. Established vs new businesses. There are arguments for pursuing relationships with either of these two options, but there will be a best-case scenario for your particular business venture. If you too are a new business with not much to offer an established enterprise, you may want to partner with another new business as you both build capacity. However, if you are established and want to move to next level operations, you could partner with a new or established complementary business to synergize growth of both. Take a critical assessment of your specific needs and make the best decision for your organization.

There are other factors to consider when choosing a potential business partner or collaboration, but if you focus on these, you will have a great start on building a successful partnership.

Want to read more on the topic? Try this article.