Strategic Partnerships and "Giving" in Networking

June 25, 2007

When I signed up for an online networking event recently, I was sent a questionnaire that is designed to get the networking started. On this questionnaire was the question, "Who would be good strategic partners for your business?" I have done a lot of networking with eWomen, and their philosophy is to give first and you’ll receive later. So part of the introduction at eWomen is "What do you need for your business or yourself in the next 30 days?" The same principles seem to apply at the alumni functions I attend, and the social networking I do online. I had not thought about the strategic partners question, so I didn’t have a ready-made answer for that one.

Why Have Strategic Business Partners?

Officially, we (NHG Consulting) do have some strategic partners listed on our website. While there are probably many reasons to have strategic partners when you are a small business, for us they can be broken up into these two categories:

Companies that can help us. What do I need to finish this project or attract this new client?
We are a very small company with limited time and resources. When a larger project comes along, we bring in contractors from other companies (such as pure coders, viral marketing gurus, and marketing campaign managers) to complete the product.
Companies that can help our clients. What does my client need to complete their startup or expand their capabilities?
For example, we provide the technology needed to streamline your company’s sales process, but we don’t teach sales. So we partner with companies that provide quality sales training or that write sales training materials. This gives our clients extra value, because we can refer them to someone who can complete their needs.

Mark Howell provides another viewpoint for strategic partnerships: strategic marketing helps you in your niche. Essentially, the idea is to do what you do best, and to find other people that can round out your services by doing what they do best. Wesley Atkins adds that partnerships allow you to share leads and create package deals. For example, we partner with an SEO company to provide comprehensive SEO solutions when needed. This allows us to concentrate on what we like to do best, which is working on the site, while the other company helps us to provide the complete solution.

Networking to Find Partnership

How do you find partnerships? Through networking! As a related side note, I want to address asking for help in networking situations. The purpose of asking for help is to put others in the position of giving. When you ask for help and someone else has the information needed, it makes that person feel good for helping and deepens the connection of both parties. This is why eWomen networking is founded on giving first, and why everyone has to ask for help in their introduction speeches—it is the foundation for relationship building as a business model. Not asking for help is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in networking!

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