Building Profitable Alliances
Whether you are just starting out in business or a large corporate company, collaborating with other businesses can give you incredible leverage.
Building Strategic Alliances are one of the fastest ways to grow your contacts, lift your profile, value add to your existing service offering and create opportunities without committing to expensive internal expansions that go beyond your core business.
It is a low cost, highly leveraged marketing strategy that can generate phenomenal results with the right preparation and planning. Simply by finding five effective and carefully chosen alliances you can produce ongoing referral streams through leveraging their networks.
While many people form successful alliances, many also overlook a lot of the preparation through not having clear expectations, an agreement in writing or a solid understanding of their legal and tax responsibilities.
1. Choosing the Right Alliance Partner
When forming alliances you need to remember that it is not just the business you need to consider if you have synergy with or not, it’s also the people involved. Personal factors aren’t as easy to measure, however they can be what determines the success or failure of the alliance, so you need to be sure you are working with the right people.
Here are just a few of the questions you should ask yourself when considering an alliance partner:
- · How credible and professional are they?
- · How long they have been in the industry?
- · What are their values and beliefs and do they match yours?
- · What is their attitude toward customer service and providing quality?
- · What is the culture of their business?
- · Do you feel confident in their ability to provide quality service?
- · Do you feel confident that they will be able to deliver on their part of the alliance?
- · Do you think they are as committed to the alliance as you are?
Before you enter into a formal agreement it is important to establish trust and spend time with your potential alliance. You need to know their capabilities, their strengths and weaknesses in order to be sure that they will do right by your clients.
2. Forming a Win/Win Relationship
In order to ensure the success and profitability of an alliance both you and your alliance partner must have clear and mutually beneficial expectations and outcomes. Business transactions of any kind need to have a win/win or a win/win/win outcome. If it is heavily swayed in only one persons favour the alliance will not be successful.
Having an alliance with no boundaries, clarity or aligned expectations can result in conflict, confusion and a strategic alliance arrangement that is not beneficial to all.
To prevent this, know how you would like to benefit from the alliance and what you are willing to provide the other party, from the beginning. This reduces the risk of future misunderstandings or your alliance partner not seeing the value for their involvement.
People will always look for what is in it for them. Showing your potential alliance you are interested in how they will benefit will demonstrate that you are not simply using this as an opportunity to sell your products or services to their database without consideration to their needs.
3. 10 Steps To A Profitable Alliance
Alliances of any kind need to follow a step by step process if they are to be successful. All too often emotion and excitement about potential opportunities can cloud the important details that need to be addressed. To form an alliance the right way we suggest you follow these steps:
Know your outcome
- Do your “due diligence” on the people you are working with
- Prepare the information
- Put together a professional proposal
- Meet and discuss any questions that have arisen from the proposal
- Negotiate any changes ensuring that it is win/win for all involved
- Clarify any areas that are not clear
- Do up an agreement
- Develop KPI’s to Test and measure performance
- Review - What did you learn? What worked? What didn’t? What would you do differently next time?
If you would like to find ideal alliances please let us know as we have a network of businesses open to forming powerful and mutually beneficial alliances.
Email me at Vicki@connectworking.com.au











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