Essential Steps to Building Strategic Partnerships

With the evolving business landscape, partnership has slowly become top in the business  game, as it compiles several benefits to the entities or organization collaborating. Due to the evolving landscape, building a strategic partnership has been a goal for most businesses as  it helps expand their reach, build sustainable growth and achieve great things, organizations would not achieve independently.

Strategic partnership surpasses the obvious of signing agreement and papers, however, it entails deep commitment to pursuing and achieving a common goal, concise navigation of complexities, building strategies and resources that aligns with each entities objectives, Building a strategic partnerships is not a smooth ride, it requires putting in the work but we are here to make it an easy one. This article discusses some important steps to building strategic partnerships for a thriving business and ways it will help your partnership investment, let's get into it!!

Steps to Build Strategic Partnerships

Here are ways to build strategic partnerships in this evolving business world. Building a strategic partnership is not limited to the following steps.

Define your Goals and Objectives

There is a popular saying that if the purpose of a thing is unknown, abuse is inevitable. This statement might be a legit one. When considering building a partnership, it is expedient to clearly state your goals and objectives of the partnership. This helps you and the partner have the same goal and pursue it. 

Identify your goals and share with your partner what you hope to achieve from them, it could be expansion, innovation, strategies, or revenue. Defining your goals helps foster a smooth partnership.

Search and Select Potential Partners

While seeking to build strategic partnerships, conduct a market analysis to identify entities that portray and align with your laid out goals and strength. Identification is a process never to sideline and while in this process, draft out criterias or requirements to select your partner, criterias such as expertise, experience, stability, and reputation can help.

After thorough research, shortlist the potential partners you came up with the requirements set for your organization. This way you will be able to select a fit candidate that aligns with your goal and is ready to give strength. 

Carry Out Due Assessment

Researching for a fit partner is important, however, carrying out a due assessment cannot be sidelined. Assess, analyze and evaluate your potential partner; assess their cultural values and operational style, analyze their competence, ability and talent, and lastly evaluate their financial strength and capabilities. All of these will help you make the right decision before selecting your partner. 

Reach out to your selected Partner and Build the Collaboration

After selecting your candidate, reach out to them through networking, meetings, or through social networks. Engage with them in informal meetings to build trust, understand them ( their culture, approach and style) and build rapport. While at it, discuss outcomes expected from the collaboration involving the two parties and explore other areas to pursue as partners.

Request or Create a Partnership Framework

The next thing to do is the Partnership Framework, it is either you create one or you request your partners to do that. Preferably, it is okay for your partners to develop the framework and then tweak them to better support your objectives. When putting together a partnership framework, state the mutual benefits of the collaboration, specify roles and responsibilities according to expertise, and determine Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to achieve the goals and track the partnership success.

Also, establish communication channels and means to promote alignment, a seamless communication and to address issues over time.

Discuss Legal terms and Agreement

Negotiate and discuss terms with your partnership, including financial and legal terms, work timeframes and deliverables at the work frame. Ensure there is legal compliance in drafting out the agreement. Once the terms and agreement are finalized, each partner can exchange documents and sign this gives each entity an edge in compliance to the law.

Implementation of the Framework

Implementation of the Framework is the furtherance of the laid out partnership protocol. In this step, you will assign roles and responsibility to individuals and cretae a measurable action plan. The sole aim of this is to avoid misconceptions, confusions, and mismanagement of duties.

Kick-Off the Partnership

After all is done, you are ready to launch your partnership. Schedule a launch meeting, introduce the teams ( for both parties), review and set expectations on the objectives. Lastly, progress with the implementation of the laid down framework.

Evaluation

Periodically, evaluate performance using the laid out KPIs, encourage feedback and address it accordingly. Be open to make the right adjustments if need be based on the feedback or contribution.

Maintain the Collaboration

It is important to maintain your partnership as it gives room for shared opportunities. Here are some ways to maintain it;

• Schedule meetings

• Discuss progress and challenges

• Discuss ways to tackle them

• Celebrate the team

• Celebrate small and big wins

• Support and encourage each other

Lastly, you can consider a long term partnership program if you are satisfied with the commitment and progress of your partners.

Conclusion

Building a strategic partnership has been made easy with this article as it discusses several ways to achieve it. We explored each step by discussing what needs to be done and how to go about it ranging from outlining business goals and objectives, searching for partnerships until maintaining them.

Share your experience while creating a strategic partnership with us, discuss your strength and the challenges, we are ready to engage with you.