Your first job with partnering is determining your strengths.  You need to know what you do best, what your store enjoys, what is financially possible and what you plan to do in the future.  You don’t want to engage in a partnering relationship with someone that might be your direct competitor either now or in the future.  

Determine Your Specialty

Whether your specialty is network consulting for small dental offices or document imaging solutions for law offices – or work in any other industry – you need to know your specialty.  Once you know what  you are best at doing, you can find the best partnering relationships with other non-competing area tech providers.  

No Partnering with Competitors

You can’t engage in partnering with competitors or you will be constantly afraid of taking each others prospects and clients.  When you are sure you are not competing, you will know your partnering companies will not steal your clients and vice versa.  

To make sure you are really non-competing, get past the business card speak.  Know what your partners do and make your own strengths clear beyond hardware, software, LANs and other services.  

Get Past Business Cards

Most people in the tech business say something similar on business cards, yellow pages and direct mil pieces.  All tech providers will list PC hardware, software and networking items.  You should not be partnering with a company unless you know what its core competency is.  What is the company’s real strength?  For what is the company known?  Why do customers choose this particular company?

Partners Should Have Different Niches

Look for very technical people, which means deeply niched IT consultants already established in the community.  You want to find consultants that don’t do what you do.  If your staff has good skills in terms of dedicated server installations but has a weakness in terms of Microsoft Exchange Server or SQL server or VPNs, look for consultants that would make for good partnering relationships that have these types of skills you don’t have.

Blogged By:  Joshua Feinberg