"...companies should expand beyond their existing resources through licensing arrangements, strategic alliances, and supplier relationships."
Business Week
"Alliances have become an integral part of contemporary strategic thinking."
Fortune Magazine
"It takes so much money to develop new products and to penetrate new markets that few companies can go it alone in every situation."
Harvard Business Review
 

 

How to Find Strategic Alliance Partners

Today's Path to Rapid Growth

Joint Ventures, Alliances, and other Corporate Partnerings are fueling the growth of the world's most successful companies. The demand to deliver more new products, quicker, and at lower prices has never been greater. Joint Ventures and other collaborative business arrangements are revolutionizing how winning companies compete. They permit companies to enter new markets and field new products that they otherwise couldn't on their own.

Partnerings can take any of a number of forms such as: a strong relationship with a major customer, a partnership with a source of distribution, a relationship with a supplier of innovation or product, or an alliance in pursuit of a common goal. Sometimes Corporate Partners form a new jointly owned company. In other instances one partner purchases equity in the other. Most often the relationship is defined by a contract.

They are the quickest way to grow your company, particularly in times of change. Without implementing difficult and time-consuming internal changes, a partnering permits you to:
Move to decisively seize opportunities before they disappear.
          -     Respond more quickly to change.
          -     Adapt with greater flexibility.
          -     Increase your market share.
          -     Gain access to a new market or beat others to that market.
          -     Shore up internal weaknesses.
          -     Gain a new skill or area of competence.
          -     Succeed although your company lacks otherwise key resources.


 

If you do not seek out allies and helpers,
then you will be isolated and weak.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Overcome Barriers to Growth
Caused by Limited Resources

Partnerings can rapidly meet your needs for key resources such as more customers, additional capital, special expertise, new products, new distribution channels, additional facilities, increased production capacity, or more personnel.

Few companies have everything that they need. You may need money, customers, or product. No matter what you need, there is someone who has it. That someone is a potential Corporate Partner.

For large companies, alliances offer access to new products, innovation, and marketplace agility, as well as additional ways to bring new products to the market more quickly with less expense.

For small companies, partnerships often provide capital, credibility, sales, marketing, product distribution, and manufacturing.

Respond to Changing Markets

It is no coincidence that corporate partnering has been very common in industries that have experienced tremendous technological change. There is a direct relationship between the rate and scope of change within an industry and the amount of partnering that occurs within that industry.

Partnering has proven itself one of the most powerful business tools for dealing with fast changing markets, technologies and customers. As the global economy speeds up, partnering is becoming the weapon of choice for today's successful competitors.

Get up to Speed Quickly

Good partners are hard to find. We make your job easier.

Try our Partner Acquisition Services and our partnering experts will help you find the right partner for your company.

Our program helps you find qualified, reliable partners tailored for your company. What fits one company, will not fit another. Therefore, we customize each campaign to your particular needs - to find the right partners for your needs.

Many companies feel using "outside" help costs them additional money. These same companies often don't have the in-house experience or expertise needed to successfully launch and complete a partnering. Each time their people make a partnering "mistake," it also costs them.

We offer the best of both worlds.

It's less expensive to learn from the
mistakes of others, than from your own.

You avoid reinventing the wheel. We'll help you jump-start your own partnering program with your own people. We organize your partnering search, launch it and bring you to your first deal.

Your people learn as we go along. They work with live ammunition and get on-the-job training - but you avoid the delay and cost of their inevitable learning mistakes. We're there to catch them when they fall and help them get up.

As they learn their way, we shift the program over to them. They will move into the lead on some pieces of the program early on in the process. On others, they will defer to later in the process.

The entire process will occur as quickly as your organization can learn and adapt. You determine the pace. We will continue to support them until they have mastered what they need to know.

Prospecting for partners is a difficult and subtle process.
It's easy to dissipate huge quantities of critical executive time,
money and corporate focus on false starts - partnerings destined
from inception never consummate or bear fruit.

Partner Acquisition Program

Our Partner Acquisition Program is customized to your specific needs and desires. Here's how we do it:

  1. We first analyze your marketing and partnering potential and propose an initial course of action.
  2. Then we conduct a joint evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses followed by a thorough assessment of your partnering needs.
  3. We prepare a profile of the target partner best suited for your partnering needs.
  4. We formulate a partner identification and procurement campaign.
  5. At this point we begin implementing the campaign. (If applicable, this portion of the program will include a partnering publicity campaign for the purpose of attracting qualified prospects. See the Partnering Publicity Campaign below.)
  6. We do case-by-case assessments of specific prospective partners and partnerings including both strategic and tactical analysis of the likely risks and benefits.
  7. We provide you experienced guidance in negotiating and closing formal specific partnering relationships including guidance on key partnering practices and preparing your first deal sheet.

Each of these is specially tailored to your company and your partnering needs. Early in the process you select which and how many of these services you need.

You make no commitment. At all times you have the unconditional right to terminate the program for any reason.

"Businesses once grew by one of two ways; grass roots up,
or by acquisition... Today businesses grow through
alliances - all kinds of dangerous alliances. Joint ventures and customer partnerings which, by the way, very few people understand."

Peter F. Drucker

Keep in mind we also provide general Partnering Advisory Services. These services include post closing assistance in managing your partnerings. We can function as a tie breaker or mediator in troubled partnerings. We can even act as a mercenary force (dedicated solely to your specific interests) in extracting you from a troubled partnering.

On the field of battle, the spoken word does not carry far enough, hence the institution of gongs and drums. Nor can ordinary objects be seen clearly enough; hence the institution of banners and flags.
The ancient Chinese "Book of Army Management"

Partnering Publicity Campaign

The best partners are the ones that seek you out. They can't and won't do that unless they know who you are, where you are, and are excited about what you have.

A well-designed and executed publicity campaign is one of the most effective tools around for accomplishing this. An added benefit is that it's usually the least expensive strategy as well.

If our analysis shows that it is likely to work for your particular needs, it is a key tool that we will use. We'll use it to showcase your company, product and partnering opportunity. The campaign will include:

  1. Preparation of a publicity strategy that targets markets and audiences likely to generate partnering opportunities, and a publicity and promotions plan that communicates an appealing message to its targeted decision makers.
  2. Preparation of a media kit designed to showcase you and your partnering opportunity.
  3. Development of a list of editors and media contacts likely to find you and your project exciting and newsworthy.
  4. Implementation of the publicity campaign by our Public Relations professionals, which includes writing, producing, and distributing appropriate news and feature articles about you and your partnering opportunities and arranging coverage by contacting representatives of key print and/or broadcast media.

We implement the publicity campaign with Public Relations professionals from affiliated Public Relations Agencies. The key is to design and launch a publicity campaign strategy that gets the attention of potential partners, distributors, key customers, backers, and even key suppliers.

The net result -- you attract motivated partners who self-qualify themselves.

How To Get Started -- Call the Corporate Partnering Institute for more information. Ask for Heidi. You can call us at (847) 677-1457 or fax us at (847) 677-1004.


Information About CPI Tools, Products and Services
CPI Partnering Tools
Customer Partnering (Guide to Key Practices) || Executive Partnering Kit
Corporate Partnering Handbook, A "How-To" Handbook
(table of contents)
Key Partnering Checklists for the 11 Most Common Partnering Agreements (table of contents)
Shareholder Buy/Sell Agreements || Letters of Intent || Due Diligence Checklists (table of contents)
One Page Strategy Sheet

Order Online || Order by Fax or Mail || Order by Email

Information on How to Partner
The Basics || Alliance Advantages/Disadvantages || Questions and Answers || Partnering Quotations
Dangerous Dozen Mistakes (summary) (full text ) || How to Find a Partner || Partnering With Your Customers

PartneringAgreements.com - Corporate Partnering Institute
CEO-Notes || DueDiligenceChecklist.com || Business Research Links
Mediation and Arbitration Including Sample Provisions
Telephone Consults || Fees || About Us || Testimonials
|| Clients and Customers
heidi@corporate-partnering.com