How To Start The Perfect Business Partnership
Ever wondered how to start the perfect business partnership? In this article and the video below we will cover:
✅ The #1 reason partnerships fail
✅ How to avoid this risk by creating shared language with any new partner
✅ How to start building the perfect business partnership using my FREE presentation template that helps create shared language between you and your business partners
Here’s the resource I created for you: https://philhsc.co/Intentdeck
TRANSCRIPT
Hey everyone, it's Phil. And today I'm going to share how you can start building the perfect business partnership and avoid the number one reason why partnerships fail. It all comes down to shared language.
So let's set the scene. You've found a business that you would love to partner with and based on all the research you've done, It looks like a perfect match. You find a way to meet that partner, and you pitch them, and they're excited. They then share a bit about their business, where they're going, what their goals are, what their story is, and you get to share your story as well. There's a lot of nodding in the room, and people are feeling pretty good about what the future looks like.
All goes well, and then after a few exchanges, the partner says, let's enter into a partnership agreement. Excellent! Or is it? In most cases, this is where lawyers tend to get involved. And let me just say for the record, I love working with great lawyers. Their job in the context of a partnership agreement is to work out how to express the intention of a partnership and put that into a document so that the expectations and the risk on both sides The most common problem at this stage in the relationship is that you and your partner haven't had a chance to work out what success looks like and what it means for you and your partner's organization.
In other words, you haven't yet developed a shared language. Now I can tell you right now that trying to work out that shared language through lawyers is not only time consuming, it's also super expensive. So, let's walk through a process for developing that shared language before you get to the lawyers.
Now, before we get to the pathway and the solution, let's talk about what shared language actually is. And shared language is simply the way that a group of people come to a common understanding of how they communicate, so they can communicate more effectively. In other words, it's the ability for somebody to hear what you've said, play it back to you accurately, and then feel confident to then sell that message on to someone else when you're not in the room.
So why is shared language relevant? Well, it's relevant because success for your organization might be defined very differently compared to how success will be defined for your new partner. For example, your partner may wish to increase customer retention and if you have a solution to help with that, your definition of success is to sell that solution to as many other organizations as possible.
In most cases, these two definitions won't be discussed in much detail and that means you could enter into a partnership Without a clear understanding of the job to actually be done. And more importantly, not having a clear understanding about how you can partner effectively for the long term. The biggest downside here, and the number one reason why partnerships fail, is that expectations aren't aligned from day one.
And, like a rocket, if it's off at launch by just an inch. By the time it gets out into orbit, it's going to be a long way off course. So what's the one thing you can do to move forward and avoid this situation altogether? Well, the good news is that there is one question you can ask your partner, and then there's a process you can take them through.
And I'm going to share with you all the resources for you to do that. Right now. Here's the question. What one measure will define success for your business in two years time? And why have you chosen that measure? It helps you get clarity on their North Star and why they chose to select that measure. It also gives you a great opportunity to start understanding How you can play a role in their success.
Importantly, it also gives you the opportunity to share that one measure of success for your business and also why you've chosen that measure and why it's important for you over the next two years. The kicker to this is that your answer to that question allows the partner to start to explore how else they can collaborate with you in the future as well.
And without that shared language, there's a great chance those collaboration opportunities would never be uncovered. So, on to the resource to help you create shared language with any one of your partners today or in the future. I've created a tool called an intent deck. It's a presentation template that has five slides, which allows you and your partner to come together on the important questions that develop shared language before you go anywhere near a partnership agreement.
Let's briefly walk through those five slides. And by the way, this is available for you for free and the link is below. So let's walk through the intent deck. And as you can see, it's designed to be a presentation that you would bring informally to your future partner to work through each of these slides.
Ultimately, it will help you then represent this back to a broader group of people. And even better yet, the final version can be used by the key person inside your partner organization to socialize your new partnership with all of their organization, their colleagues. and the people that they need to get buy in from as well to make the partnership successful.
So let's walk through this. Of course, you update this with your brand and all your details as you're moving through. Imagine you're walking into a conversation and we, of course, introduce the people who are in the room. And then we start moving through into the first step. And this is really all about defining what does success look like?
And remember, every partnership Is built on the basis of trust. So what is that one metric that we can help to improve between? Ourselves and our new partner and we think about this in terms of what are the three steps that we can walk through that are fundamental to creating trust. That language around success goes on these slides and it talks about it being a journey quite deliberately.
So because a journey is what you're about to embark upon a little bit of it's unknown, but I can tell you there are so few people that go through this process that you will stand out. for having taken the time to move through this step alone. So as we move to the next slide, here's where we actually express why this partnership makes sense.
And the best part about this is you have a chance to express what you can see from your vantage point, how your organization can contribute and do some really good work. And then your partner can come along and say, well, this is what we're really good at. That goes on the right hand side. And then together, the objectives that we're going to conquer through this partnership And this is very collaborative.
You can propose what you think should be there in the first instance, but the good news is, beyond that, you can come together and make all these sections gel together to make sense. So you can feel proud when you're presenting it to other people in both your organization and beyond. Now you know what's really important here.
As you move beyond what you think the great ambition might be, it's all about listing what are the principles that we're going to be guided by as we build trust and as we build partnership. And this might be things like we would like to make sure that we meet regularly so we can stay on the same track.
If we have. A disagreement, we're going to assume best intentions and as a consequence of that, we're going to have a conversation that's open and is also based on best intentions until we get to the bottom of whatever the issue is. That's just an example of two principles, but I suggest having up to about seven of those so that you can take the best practices from your organization, mesh them with the best practices from your new partner's organization, and now you know how to work together.
Of course, this can change over time, but the good news is that you get to a point. where you have a shared understanding about how you're going to work together. All right, we're nearly at the end. How quick is this presentation? The next one is about trying to create an action orientation towards what you do next.
Sets up like this. It's a basic table that says, we're going to do these things together. Our contribution will be A, your contribution will be B, and this is what we're going to end up doing. And this is just to show to anyone who reads this presentation, we've thought about what the first pathway to the first quick wins could be to demonstrate that this partnership is valuable.
That happens on the next step slides. And then never forget this, the last slide. I know it sounds strange. But don't forget to list who to contact to learn more about the partnership. So there you have it. That's the intent deck. It's super simple. It's the most powerful document that you can start to avoid the number one reason why partnerships fail.
Now, the link to this intent deck is free and it's below in the comments. And there you have it. If you found this useful, please consider subscribing to my youtube channel. And if you have a question, send it to me here!
Know someone who needs to see this video? Copy and send this link in a text: https://philhsc.com/articles/how-to-start-building-the-perfect-business-partnership
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