Business partnerships can enhance your business, but you have to be careful when you form them. The following are some tips for managing the pitfalls of business partnerships.
A List of Things to Think About with Business Partnerships
Form business partnerships with only non-competing companies. Carefully peruse business cards, marketing materials, websites and other items to make sure the company is truly non-competing.
Have a non-disclosure agreement and a non-compete document ready before you start any business partnerships. These items need to be reviewed by your attorney.
Get a real project commitment from your clients before you enter into business partnerships. You can’t risk forming business partnerships to manage a project and then finding out that the client wasn’t really serious about completing it.
Qualify the budget of your client, the timeline and the project’s importance before using a business partnership to manage it.
Talk about the relationship and the nature of all business partnerships with potential partners from the beginning. At the very least, you want to label the work to decide if it’s going to be done through an informal referral, if there will be revenue sharing, if the relationship will be master-subcontractor, who is going to be the go-to person on the account and who owns the account.
You can’t just count on your partner understanding the world of small business virtual IT. Work in some time for teaching and managing as part of business partnerships.
Be ready to manage relationships between clients and business partners. You will be responsible for protecting your partner and your client from uncomfortable situations that may arise.
Be ready to translate when you get involved with business partnerships. Your client and the partners may not be speaking the same business language so you will be responsible for helping them communicate. Coordination is your job as part of business partnerships.
Your Job is Virtual CIO
When getting involved in business partnerships, you will be the manager of all projects for your partners. Set clear guidelines and ensure the quality of the work being done through careful management and diligent monitoring.
Blogged By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit
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