How To Build Strategic Initiatives Or Partnerships For Business Development
Introduction
If your business is new or growing, whatever the case may be, there are a lot of reasons why you should consider entering into strategic initiatives or partnerships for your business development. This is because strategic initiatives or partnerships will help to add value to your business as well as help you promote your products or services by expanding what your business has to offer.
Entering into partnership with another business can either be a blessing or a curse. This is why you need to understand the pros and cons of partnering with other businesses. As a matter of fact, if you are so lucky enough to find a business that will serve as a party that reciprocates your business well enough, it will be like a match made in heaven.
Strategic initiatives or partnerships for business development as a matter of fact entails establishing, maintaining and retaining strategic relationships with key partners that will help in adding meaningful value to your own business as you add to theirs. In this article, we will be exploring what strategic initiatives or partnerships means, its goals, how you build strategic partnerships, types of strategic initiatives or partnerships agreements to help grow your business and its importance.
Table of Contents
- What does Strategic Initiatives or Partnership mean?
- What are the Goals of Strategic Initiatives or Partnerships?
- How Do You Build Strategic Initiatives or Partnerships for Business Development?
- Importance of Strategic Initiatives or Partnerships in Business Development
- Conclusion
What does Strategic Initiatives or Partnership mean?
There are initiatives and partnerships and there are strategic initiatives and partnerships. What makes the difference is the fact one is strategic and the other is not. Your business can always partner with another business. However, what brings out the desired results is the strategies employed.
Strategic Initiatives or Partnerships for business development has to do with joining hands with another business. This is to share the benefits and risks from results of joint actions. As a matter of fact, the two businesses will make contributions in strategic areas. This is for their joint or common business development.
A strategic initiative or partnership is one that should be lucrative for both organizations, companies or business. Partnering with other organizations helps you to remain relevant to your customers. At the same time, you’re still maintaining your business. It helps you get some outside expertise, tools and resources to progress in your business. As a matter of fact, partnering with the right business will help you to also expand your influence with a broader audience.
In essence, joining forces in strategic initiatives or partnerships should deliver a consistent, predictable and incremental growth for both organizations.
What are the Goals of Strategic Initiatives or Partnerships?
Amidst so many other objectives of strategic initiatives and partnerships, we will only discuss a few. They are as follows:
Enhancing Capabilities and Competence
The two partners involved in the strategic initiatives and partnerships are both going to benefit from the alliance. This alliance will then help to combine and enhance the technology, skills, experience and competence of the partners. This will further result in the progress of the two companies.
Enhancing Value Creation
When partners combine knowledge, experiences, resources and competence, it results in the creation or generation of value. This in turn will help these two businesses remain relevant in their works. It will as well help them to keep producing products that ultimately meet the needs of their customers. As a matter of fact, they end up offering valuables to themselves.
Leveraging Resources
Strategic initiatives and partnerships aim at enabling each partner’s leverage on the other partner’s resources. It is a truth that each partner would have areas where they are wanting. In essence, each partner would cover up for the other’s inabilities according to their agreements.
In other words, each partner would cover up for the other’s weaknesses and vice versa. Also, their strengths will form great alliances that cannot be easily tampered with.
Enhancing Market Position And Achieving Business Development
For every strategic initiative or partnership, the goal is expansion and development. This in essence is how the two partnering companies will grow. At the same time, they will maintain their individual identity.
This means that every of the actions and steps the two companies would take will work towards achieving the desired growth, development and expansion for the companies.
Achieving Globalization
Another important goal of strategic initiatives or partnerships is that it grants the partnering companies access to international networks and distribution. When strategic alliances are formed, they may be used to get market access and international business growth.
Managing Risks
Strategic alliances help in spreading risks to all partners in projects that carry very high risks. This is an advantage to the partnering companies because one company won’t have to bear the risks alone.
How Do You Build Strategic Initiatives or Partnerships for Business Development?
Many strategic initiatives or partnerships that are announced with a bang have gone flat and disappointing. Partnering strategically with other businesses has become an implicit part of business growth. It is pertinent that before businesses can come together in partnership, they should start with two basic prerequisites. From working together, the companies must be able to gain meaningful market benefits and profits. Each of the companies should also have something that the other can leverage on and drive incremental profits or revenue together.
All in all, they should also be able to build a partnership that is scalable. In this section, we will be discussing ten measures on which you can build strategic initiatives or partnerships. They are as follows:
Align Your Businesses
It is very important that the two businesses that want to join forces ask themselves this question: “Should we work together and why?”
It is pertinent that the two companies have organizational aspirations that compliment each other. Whatever decisions you want to take should align together and your key priorities must be common in nature. Ensure that you have an in depth discussion with your business partner around this topic.
Also, there should be a place for regularly reviewing alignment as both companies change directions from time to time. Make sure you share the same big picture.
Come to an Agreement
Know if you both can work together. Once you both have discussed and determined your businesses objectives together, the next step to take is to know for sure if both sides can work together. Ensure that you both come to a general partnership agreement.
Plan Your Businesses
This is a very important topic that both parties must discuss. What are your goals or plans for the alliance or strategic initiatives or partnerships? How do you get there? Your plans must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based. Set your goals and set plans on how to achieve them.
Have Senior Supporters
To achieve your dreams and plans, you need to have people who are always there to support your businesses. These are the people who will serve as sponsors for you. Make relationships with people who are executively engaged with you and your business. They must be heavy hitters and be ready to stand up for your business and the common goal.
Do Your Products Work Well Together?
It is not enough to just have plans and people to support your business. It is better when your business partner’s products compliment yours and vice versa. Ensure that there is a technical and operational team that collaborate well to ensure a seamless customer experience. Consider how you each do business, terms and logistics.
Put Your Marketing Processes in Place
This is one of the execution processes you must not overlook. Both companies need to be proactive in creating awareness as well as putting all the right marketing tools in place.
Moving Forward
Are both parties ready to always move forward? This is an implementation process that must be put in place. People who need to sell, implement or service customers must always be ready to do so. Train the people working with both companies for necessary operations. Train them to as well as to handle critical missions.
Motivate People Financially
If you want people to act in support of your partnership, you need to be able to motivate people financially in order to work for your success.
Sales Engagement
Driving productivity and scalable growth can only be possible when you get sales managers who are involved in planning both sales targets and activities. Ensure that you are involved in sales transactions often and to achieve a great feat.
Review
It is very important that you review whatever you do over periods of time and with certain people who will help your strategic initiatives or partnerships. If you have come so far in all of these processes, you need to be intentional about governance. You should have meetings with stakeholders of the partners and analyze results, discuss challenges and redefine goals. It is at these reviews that new laws for further growth of the companies can be made and you can also build on other things.
Importance of Strategic Initiatives or Partnerships in Business Development
Access to New Customers
One importance of strategic initiatives or partnerships in business development is the fact you will have access to meet up with new customers. When you form an alliance with another company, the good thing for you there is that you will be able to reach their own customers too. This is an effective marketing strategy and it helps you reach out to other customers and double your own clients in the process.
The more people you are able to reach out to, the more clients you will get. When people see your products in an area frequently, they begin to develop interest in them once they meet your needs.
Opportunity to Reach New Market
Once you form an alliance with another company, you will have access to expand your business on horizons that are previously unexplored. If your business has the chance to explore a new frontier, use the chance to benefit you and your partner.
Added Value to Previous Customers
Strategic initiatives or partnerships also contribute to adding value for your loyal customers. Reaching out to customers during the growth period can help solidify loyalty. Normally, the free publicity you would get from happy customers would do your business so much good. You want to have happy customers who would also refer to their friends as a result of the results they get from you.
By forming alliances with other corporations, you have a higher chance of meeting clients who you would add more value to and also get more publicity from.
Increase in Brand Awareness
Another benefit of strategic initiatives or partnerships is the construction and increase in brand awareness. It is very crucial that you go all out for your business and let people know who you are. Partnering with other corporations will put on the spot of awareness where more people will get to know about your business. You need to work on your brand recognition and an alliance with another company will help you earn a name.
Brand Trust
A good partnership with another business is a way for enhancing brand trust. When people see how well you partner with other businesses, they will see how well your brand is trustworthy and reliable. As a result, they will also be able to trust and rely on your brand.
Building and maintaining good relationships is very essential for strategic initiatives or partnerships.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the development of your business is highly reliable in building good relationships with other businesses. Partnership works in so many ways to spur growth and development for your business. As a matter of fact, the feat you will attain when you’re a sole owner of a business cannot be compared to the greater feats you will achieve when you partner with other businesses. Therefore, this article has successfully established why you should consider partnering with other businesses and corporations. With the right attitude and mindset, the sky is your starting point.
