Building The Bridge To Partnerships (JV Partners)
Building The Bridge To Partnerships
When building a bridge you start out by building a strong base. You work your way up little by little eventually adding the large beams that will hold the weight necessary to cross.
In business, partnerships are built in the same way. You don’t go out building large projects with your partners without first getting to know them and how well they work.
There are a lot of little things that need to be taken care of before you can add the large ‘beams’.
First, you want to really know your potential partner. You want to know how well they work with clients, how they follow through with projects and how they work with you. Knowing these things ahead of time before investing your time, money and energy into a long term project will save you countless hours of stress and wasted productivity.
Start with the Small Things
Reviews – A simple way to start working with a potential partner. Get a review copy of their product and give an honest review of it to your readers.
Interviews – Ask your prospective partner questions about their service or product in an audio interview or co-host a video interview and share it on your membership site.
Giveaways – A great low cost way to see how your potential partner follows through with projects. It can also tell you how much work you can expect from them.
Guest Blog Posts – Share guest blogging with a potential partner. If this goes well try a cross blog conversation and work up to a blog series. You can gauge their writing ability as well as whether they are all about promoting their products or about catering to the needs of readers and customers.
Affiliate Relationships – Become an affiliate for one of their products or services. This can be a first step into a long term partnership.
Move onto the Larger Things
Develop a product together – Once you have developed a strong relationship you can think about creating a joint project together. This will build both of your businesses and can be a short term project or a long term project.
Add value to their product – Develop a resource that will add value to their product. Think about how to benefit their customers while at the same time encouraging the growth of your own business.
Split the profits – Collaborating on a project can reap great profits for both businesses. You can split right down the middle or give your partner a greater share of the profits in exchange for their expertise in an area that you lack. You only want to dive into this type of project after working with someone with a proven record of follow through and reliability.
Split the workload – Once you really know your partner, you can give more and more responsibility to them knowing that they can be counted on. You can develop a product together but have them do most of the work as well as getting most of the profits. You still benefit because your name is on the project and your list and business is still growing along with theirs.
Building bridges is hard work but in the end it is the strong bridge that stands the test of time.
Develop those relationships, start with the small things and move onto the larger things. Eventually you will create a successful joint partnership that you can be proud of.
All the best,
