The most important factor for any business is our conversion rate, meaning how we translate visitors and potential customers into actual sales. While many strategies can be put in practice to push our business growth into a steady rhythm, two powerful tools can make the difference: customer referrals and B2b business-to-business partnerships.
Customer referrals are our daily response on how are we handling our brand, and often happen to become directly affected by the response customers get from our sales representatives. On the other hand, B2B partnerships take several aspects into account, ranging from managerial strategies, the kind of product/service we are producing, our current popularity and the amount of risk we are willing to take, but also the position our potential business partner has in today’s market and their trajectory.
B2B Partnerships aren’t mean to be taken lightly as they can prove to be living relationships whose terms and conditions can change in the process. Clear objectives and a keen foresight of the potential collaboration value proves to be essential for these managerial arrangements to survive; however, today we are going to review key factors that can help us to craft compelling B2B partnerships to boost our business’ potential.
This proves to be critical for any long-term commitment to a goal. Business partners need to share vision, values and working methods if their aim is to build a close working relationship. By having the same convictions over fundamental values that make a business strategy, no decision could be tainted as wrongly made for not trusting your instincts; therefore, you are reducing the odds of a possible misunderstanding among members of the same team. Clear examples of these successful partnership strategies can be seen in the sports industry, especially in motor racing.
Narrow the Search
There’s no point besides losing time if you keep mailing and mailing websites to reach a potential partnership if you haven’t sorted out what you desire of the agreement to be like. Most brands won’t be apt to meet the terms you desire your collaboration to take place. Therefore, you are just limiting your chances of expanding your business rather than improving if you push for the wrong partner.
Sit down with enough time to get the big picture and start noting down what makes your brand so unique that other companies might be interested. Highlight not just your key production points but also HR values shared among your crew and your vision towards the industry in which you desire to rank.
Get a Written Contract
It’s not just saying: “Hey, we’re partners from now on” – that’s not how businesses work. Get legal help if needed on how to write a proper contract that will explain both conditions and responsibilities to fulfil from both parts, milestones to reach, and revision instances, in which both parts can analyse if the agreement is working as expected or if it should be cancelled. It’s not just a paperwork duty but the first step to building trust: as both partners know what is expected of them, no one can feel cheated by the other part in case something turns unexpected.
Help Your Partners
And here comes the core of any partnership agreement! Partnered companies aren’t just a commercial cliché or a friendship among two or more brands, but a method for boosting financial results. Hence, partners are expected to stick up for good and bad (like what you can say to a married couple), always trying to do the greater good. Supporting each other over long term goes beyond saying “we are partners” but tracing marketing strategies that attend the interests of the members involved, developing cross-sell and up-sell methods for reaching a bigger market and, in general, referring buyers in a non-obvious method which will encourage natural customer engagement.
B2B partnerships – The Unwanted Side-Effects
There are, however, consequences for not choosing our partners with care. If one of the members of the partnership feels the other part isn’t doing what’s expected, or that it’s considering the benefits of other’s work without providing value to the combo, then it’s time to balance the overall value of that partnership itself. The point isn’t to be arguing or showing a lack of communication skills each time you meet but to take the best of the members involved to reach a bigger audience.
Once again, a detailed plan is fundamental for aiming to success. If under any circumstance, objectives aren’t followed as expected, you can always refer to the original business plan to see where things started to go wrong and amend what is in front of us. Like any other business arrangement, the sole answer to success is both patience and hard work to get rewarded; now it’s your time to put these strategies into practice.
