In partnering, the first thing you need to do is figure out your strengths. What it is that you do best? What does your store enjoy? What's financially viable? What you're planning on doing for the next six months to a year? You really want to make sure that you're not partnering with someone that's going to be a direct competitor of yours and vice versa.
What's Your Specialty?
It might be network consulting for small dental offices. It might be document imaging solutions for small law offices. Maybe it's point of sale networks, BOS systems, for small restaurant chains. Whatever it is, once you've figured out where your real strength is, the best, most productive kind of partnering that you can possibly do is with other non-competing technology providers in your area.
Make Sure You're Not Partnering With Competitors
Double underline and highlight the "non" part. Otherwise you're going to be terrified that you're going after each other's prospects and clients. One of the scariest things for a lot of people when they get first get started with partnering is that this company is going to go aggressively after your business.
In order to be sure that you are non-competing, you need to move past "business card BS." Know exactly what it is that they do. Most of the companies that you're going to want to partner with and most of the companies that are going to want to partner with you need to know more about what your real strength is beyond hardware, software, LANs and service.
Move Past the Business Card Terms
Everyone says the same thing on their business card, their yellow pages ad and their direct mail piece. Most people list PC hardware, software, and networking and services. But it's really important when you're partnering with a company to figure out what their core competency is. What's the best thing that they do? What are they known for? What is the one thing their customer prospects come to them for?
Make Sure Your Partners Have Completely Different Niches
You need to look for highly technical people; deeply niched IT consultants who are already out there. Look for consultants who don't want to touch the stuff that you do every day.
In other words, if your staff has good skills that can get you simple dedicated server installations but things like Microsoft Exchange Server or SQL server or VPNs throw you for a loop, that's where it pays to look around for some Advisers in your area to better partner.
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