Partnering: The Key To Growth In Hard Financial Times
Sunday, den 9. November 2008By Shaun Killian (MLead, MEd)
In hard financial times, you need to maximise your income streams while watching every dollar you spend. Would you like to grow your business for little if any outlay? The secret is rediscovering the ‘we’ mentality that underpins the lost art of partnering.
The Me Mentality
The world today is filled with stories that reflect a ‘me’ mentality, and small business is no different. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to critically view every encounter, be it with clients, suppliers or others, with a ‘what’s in this for me’ attitude. One of the earliest nuggets of wisdom I learned when starting the Australian Leadership Development Centre (ALDC) from a humble garage, was that no matter what business you are in, you are either in the business of making money, or you are in the wrong business.
From Me To We
Now don’t get me wrong, I still believe this. But it is an incomplete view of the world that limits your ability to grow your business and make more money. By contrast, a ‘we’ mentality involves looking at how you and others can work together for mutual benefit. You will find many examples in Big Business such as Harvey Norman working with GE Money to offer ‘no interest, no repayment finance for 18 month’s. In this arrangement both parties win. Harvey Norman captures those prospective customers who want what they sell, but may not have the money at the moment, while GE Money gets people signed up to its product amidst the 300+ credit cards available in the Australian market. Other well known partnership arrangements include QANTAS & Avis, eBay & PayPal, and Woolworths/Safeway & Caltex.
Yet, you don’t have to be a big company to benefit from partnering. In fact, it is the limited resources of SMEs that make partnering such an attractive option for small business. Without any additional investment in resources, partnering allows you to grow your business profit a number of ways including, reaching more clients, reducing expenses and better meeting prospective customer needs.
Building Your Own Partnerships
The first step in partnering is to strategically build a potential partner list by asking yourself 3 questions:
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What are your most pressing business needs at the moment?
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Who could help you achieve those needs?
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Which of these people could you help in some way, and how could you help them?
In my own story of growing the ALDC, our most pressing business challenge was that we were consistently half filling our management training seminars through our limited bank of email contacts. Half full covered expenses, and took a lot of my time to get there. Yet, once a program was half full, every person who registered was virtually pure profit. So we partnered with a professional association of managers. They had large databases of contacts and great pulling power. In return, we added to their reputation of meeting their members needs and shared our profit with them. Even with a 50-50 shared profit arrangement, we were making 5 x as much money per workshop because they were full. Your situation will be different, but you can work through the above questions to find productive partnerships of your own.
Once found, make contact and be sure to show them how the deal works for them as well. But be careful, not all partnerships work as it requires a ‘we’ mentality on both sides. Start small, with a trial arrangement. Then dump partnerships that don’t work, and enhance the ones that do.
Shaun Killian is a guest columnist for The Australian and a director with the Australian Leadership Development Centre - our countries only educational organisation exclusively devoted to leadership.
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Sunday, den 9. November 2008In the last one week, I have been busy entertaining some overseas guests plus my MIL who are all in town. It is tiring. I’m not used to entertaining people everyday so dining out with relatives every night does take a toll on my schedule and personal time.
I did steal abit of time to try [...]
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