Partnership as an effective tool for business development

Gentlemen of Khabravchany, I propose today to consider what the "Strategic Partnership" is.
Please do not judge strictly, this is my first public article. Wellcome under cat.

Today I propose to consider the following issues:

1. What is a partnership?
2. Partnership types and goals?
3. Where to start developing a partnership?
4. Where to go next?

To begin with, let's take a look at what a strategic partnership is based on a living and very successful example.

1. What is a strategic partnership?
In the early 80s, a young and ambitious company that at that time existed on the market for just over five years, with the little-known name Microsoft, entered into an agreement with IBM. The agreement stated that all computers of the new generation IBM PC will be equipped with the DOS operating system, which was developed by Microsoft.
As a result of such a partnership, Microsoft began to receive a reward for each sold personal computer. In the 83rd year, the company's revenue was $ 55 million, plus everything, the company became the most influential developer in the market, and in 1990, Microsoft's share in the computer market exceeded 90%. Today, Microsoft has a capitalization of $ 807.66 billion.

Of course, Microsoft were not pioneers in this methodology of business development.
The first to see the benefits of a strategic partnership were airlines. After the first airlines entered into a series of agreements with carrier companies and hotels, the business began to actively develop, and moreover, in the entire partnership chain.
After the appearance on the market of such an effective tool, the so-called “affiliate program” pumped into other areas of the business.
Today, an affiliate network is found daily in the form of various cashbacks, discount coupons for purchases in partner stores, etc.

I summarize all of the above, we can call strategic partnership an effective tool for promoting your brand, your products or services.

2. Types of partnerships and goals?

Well, to begin with, there are only two types of partnerships - the first, registered partnership, with the participation of 2 or more persons and the second type - cooperation that is not legally recorded, but exists and is supported by all participants in it.
As for the forms of organization, of them we can distinguish the following areas:

• The most common form is a commercial partnership.
The case when the target audience of one business is the same target audience for another business.
Example:
Car dealerships.
There is no more interested in business partnership than dealerships.
Their main goal and benefit in the partnership is not to get the opportunity to resell cars, but to be able to service the cars they sold.
A classic dealership center always includes a service station area where most of the net profit of a business is earned.
No matter how absurd this may sound, but very often, a DC can give you a car at a big discount, practically without making money, but in this way he will get a loyal customer who will come to him for annual maintenance and repairs.
In turn, the car manufacturer, from such a partnership receives another sales channel for its products, while not selling anything itself, which allows him to concentrate more on production.

• The next form of partnership is not a commercial form.
This format implies voluntary cooperation and assistance in promoting a product or service.
An example of a non-commercial partnership, I can serve as social networks.
The 2 owners of the groups agree on a mutual exchange of the audience and begin to invite their readers to the partner group by the means of publication in their link group. Or when a famous blogger invites another famous blogger to his channel for joint recording of the episode. It turns out a kind of "redirect" of the audience.

• The third form of partnership is limited partnership.
In such a partnership, each of the parties is solely responsible within the previously agreed framework. Often this type of partnership is used in “partnership coalitions”, when the entire cycle of contacts with the client is divided into different performers.
As an example, we can single out construction companies operating on a turnkey basis.
In such a scheme, of course, there will be a partner, the framework of which will include control and management of the project. There will be a partner who will solve all problems with legal and technical documentation. The third partner will be responsible for the supply of building materials, the fourth partner will build. As we can see, here each of the partners is personally responsible for their part of the work.
Often, a few completed projects are enough for this type of partnership to develop into a full-fledged association such as LLC or JSC.

• The next form of partnership that cannot be ignored is full partnership.
Such a partnership implies the responsibility of all parties to this cooperation.
Where can we see this type of partnership in everyday life?
We can see such experience in any product jointly developed by several companies. A good example is the active promotion and use of Apple Pay. Thanks to a partnership with Master Card, which owns one of the largest customer bases in the world, Apple is expanding the cashless payment market very quickly and efficiently.
Since the end of 2014 and to date, about 127 million people have been using Apple pay for contactless payments. None of the large, active payment systems, has not yet shown such growth dynamics.

• And the final, but far from the last of all possible forms, is strategic partnership.
This form includes long-term cooperation. A similar type of partnership is inherent in a ready-made business, which has strengthened in the market and is now starting to expand its niche. With this type of cooperation is not so simple. If a business partner is a larger player in the market than your company, plus your business sector is strategic for the development of this partner, there is a high probability that your company will be merged or absorbed. It is good if this affiliation is mutually beneficial, but you can never exclude the moment when your business is selected or driven into such a framework that its further integration will need to be integrated with another business. Therefore, speaking of strategic partnerships, you should always predict the prospects and results that you can get.

3. Where to start developing a partnership?

Always, before carrying out any processes aimed at promoting or developing your business, you need to start with yourself.
If you have decided what your company is doing; how the company positions itself in the market; what value does your business bear to the client; who is the client of your business; where this client is located - you have already done a titanic work, you can safely skip this step and proceed to the next stage, if not, then I strongly recommend that you go through these points and answer all questions. I also want to say right away that without answering all these questions, honestly, to yourself, you can never build an effective affiliate channel.
After you have determined for yourself the key parameters of your business, we proceed to the search for partners.
What you must pay attention to when searching:

• What kind of business your audience intersects with.
Everything is simple here, the same audience can interact with business in different market segments, you just have to determine where your client will go after or before you buy from you.

• Determine the level of touch with the client.
A very important factor in partnership is the moment of interaction between all partners and the client. In this regard, it becomes important to understand at what stage of work with the client your business will be included.
It’s good if you sell the main product to the client, for example, a smartphone, and then the client goes to the partner’s website and registers a SIM card, and after that the client goes to the store of another partner and buys accessories for a new smartphone. In this case, you can not worry about the fact that a “resentful” partner will come to you and will not buy anything from you.
But what if, in this whole chain, you are not the first touch?
Here, only communication with a partner, studying the moments of his work with clients will help you. If you do not do this at the stage of finding a partner, there is a chance to lose time. with a partner who is not trying to increase audience loyalty, you are unlikely to be able to effectively build a business.

• Communication.
So you have completed all the previous steps, studied everything, written out a huge list of companies with which you could potentially establish cooperation.
The question arises: how to start talking? How to find common interests?
There are many methods of attracting partners, in fact they are not very different from methods of attracting customers. Nevertheless, there is one that has been tested for years: “letter + phone call”.
In order to communicate with a potential partner by phone, you need an info reason.
The letter should be informative, concise and contain a specific partnership offer. When writing a letter, you need to understand that its purpose is not to convert your partner to you, but first of all close it to a meeting. It doesn’t matter if this is a face-to-face meeting or, for example, on Skype. A phone call always serves as an occasion to show interest in the letter, for example: “Good afternoon! My name is Ivan Ivanov, I sent you a letter in the mail. Orient, received? ” After such a call, 99% of potential partners will definitely come in to read the letter you sent.

• A meeting.
When forming an affiliate channel, it is very important to meet with partners. And it is equally important to instill this in partners from the first meetings. While you work through mail correspondence or in general, dedicated managers communicate between your companies, there can be no talk of any development of an affiliate channel. Only direct interaction between business leaders and joint development planning can give a result, but routine work and some part of processes where constant monitoring is not required can be safely delegated to managers.

4. Where to go next?
So, you have already identified your partner companies, talked with them, made a number of agreements depending on the type of your cooperation, but what next? What are the options for interactions?
In fact, when all the formalities are settled and you can begin to jointly sell your products and services, planning will be a very important point. Agree with a partner to discuss a roadmap for joint activities.
This stage can cause difficulties solely in organizing the activities themselves. partners may not always have enough competencies or a competent employee.
Despite the huge number of activities that can be carried out as part of an affiliate program, I highlight for myself the following:

• Joint promotions and bonuses, the so-called cross-marketing.
Cross-marketing has obvious benefits:

1. Increase in customer flow, due to the partner’s audience.
2. Formation of a unique offer in the market.
3. Reduces marketing budgets.
4. Increases loyalty.
5. Allows you to further increase brand awareness.

An example of “cross-marketing” is the Oral-B toothbrush, which comes exclusively with Duracell batteries, and when you buy Happy Meal at MacDonald's restaurant chain, you will probably find a toy from the new cartoon that is now going to the movies.

• The next tool that I highlight is the internal discount program or the so-called “co-branded cards”.
Surely, each of you, in your wallet has at least one bonus card, no matter what the store. It either gives you the so-called “discount for loyalty”, or you accumulate points on it for further calculation by them.
With a co-branded card, things are similar, but it allows you to use bonuses not within a single store or chain of stores, but within an affiliate network, and even in niches that are not always interconnected.
With the help of this program, which involves and retains the client by means of accruing bonuses, cashbacks, points, partners stimulate an increase in the number of operations in their affiliate network. Which, in turn, increases the volume of sales and all of this.

• Joint product.
This tool can rightly be attributed to “co-branding,” but still I would single it out as a separate area of ​​development.
A joint product can often solve a number of problems related to the technological possibility of its production, lack of competencies in one direction or another, lack of the ability to quickly enter the market, and simply as a workaround for any economic sanctions.
Today we are observing how Western investors, in order to circumvent anti-Russian sanctions, simply take and develop a joint product based on existing proposals in the Russian Federation.
Or another example, when Microsoft was unable to include the Cortana voice assistant in the new Windows 10 product, just because the Bing search engine in the Russian Federation is not serviced, a decision was made to release a joint product with Yandex. The result of this partnership was the voice assistant "Alice", which is now actively gaining popularity.

• Information partnership or “Cross-promo partnership”
You can meet such activity 5 times a day, in ordinary life.
You make a purchase of a set for making sushi, and as a gift you get a coupon with a 10% discount on ordering a set of Japanese knives in a partner’s store.
Or you make a purchase in a candy store, and at the exit from the store you can meet a shelf with discount coupons to a network of dental clinics.

• And, perhaps, the extreme activity that I would like to talk about is the joint holding of events.
I want to say right away that not every business needs to carry out any events for its customers, but if such activities fit into the current model of your business, you can not ignore this.
Firstly, by conducting a joint event with a partner, you can share the costs of organizing, secondly, the audience will be larger, thirdly, a partner’s loyal audience is not always your loyal audience, so a joint event will allow you to get to know it, increase trust in you and your company.

PS These days, it's hard to sell a product, but it's easy to sell a complete solution! Take a look around, for sure you will find something to add to and your UTP.