Picking Partners To Grow With

When you realize it’s time to grow, you also need to realize you can’t do it alone. You need partners who compliment your strengths and other partners to evangelize what you are doing. The best and brightest companies in the world have holes in their capabilities; and the best products and services in the world are really only best if the world knows about them.

Filling the gaps

Say, for instance, your company is a great creator of technology; awesome at listening to the marketing and building what they want and need. However, your team is not so great at selling those creations to the market. That’s understandable. Selling is the second oldest profession in the world for a reason. Great salespeople bring products to the market.

We’re experiencing that right now in my company. Over the last few years, we’ve built a product that requires a different level of sales expertise to the market. I’m working now to find the right sales organization to help us with that task. Could I do it myself? Probably, but then I would not be able to move on to the next idea. We’ve got plenty of great ideas to grow our company and that’s what we’ll be doing over the next three to five years.

Evangelize – Tell the World!

In some ways, the internet makes this easier than at any time in history. In other ways, all the information on the internet makes it difficult to be heard through the clutter. You need raving fans to tell the world how great you and your products are. There are plenty of ways to do this and I’m a big fan of affiliate marketing for this task.

We just re-launched our ProofPass.com site this week and there is a future plan to let our raving fans be affiliates and make a few extra bucks when they send people our way. There’s nothing wrong with rewarding people’s loyalty. Credit card companies do it all the time with rewards and cash-back programs.

I’ve also utilized affiliate programs to make a few extra bucks helping to promote those products and services I truly believe in and use. For example, I love what’s happening inside Kitchen Table Companies (KTC). Much of my current thinking about how I’m going to grow the business begins or is incubated in the KTC forums. And yes, if you click on the link for KTC and like what you see enough to join, I will be compensated.

Don’t go it alone

One person, or one company alone, has to do it all. If you’re doing it all, you’re probably not doing all of it well. Do what you do best and find partners to fill the gaps. Some, you can pay as contractors or vendors. Others, you can share the revenue with as you grow. Properly executed, you will both be more successful.

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