Grow through partnerships with businesses that serve the same customers

Someone else already has your customers' trust

"We need more customers, but ads keep getting more expensive." Meanwhile, other businesses talk to your ideal customers every day. A wedding photographer meets couples who also need decorators, caterers and makeup artists. A feed dealer meets poultry farmers who need vaccines, equipment and veterinary advice. A property agent meets families who are about to buy furniture, interior work and an internet connection. A partnership lets you reach these people through someone they already trust, and lets your partner offer their customers something useful.

This page is about deeper arrangements between businesses: joint offers, bundles, shared events and services offered at each other's locations. A simple referral reward is a separate topic, covered in B2B referral programmes.

Finding the right partner

Map your customer's journey. What do they buy or do just before they need you, at the same time, and right after? Each step points to a type of business. Then look for partners who:

1. Serve the same customers but do not compete with you.
2. Have a reputation you are comfortable being linked to. Their poor service will reflect on you.
3. Are of a size where your offer matters to them. A very large company may not care; a business your size often will.
4. Have someone with time to make it work. Partnerships fail when nobody owns them.

Your existing network is the best starting point: suppliers, customers who run businesses of their own, and people you know from your business association or trade fairs.

Kinds of partnership worth trying

• Bundle: your product plus theirs as one combined offer, such as a solar installer working with a battery and inverter dealer.
• Co-marketing: a joint Facebook live, a shared stall at a fair, a combined leaflet.
• Service at their location: for example, a weekly health check held at a pharmacy.
• Supply partnership: you become the preferred supplier for their customers, to an agreed standard.
• Shared resources: a delivery van or storage space shared by two non-competing businesses in the same town.

Structure it so it lasts

Many partnerships start with a handshake between friends and end badly because nothing was agreed. Decide and write down:

• What each side contributes: customers, product, money, staff time.
• How revenue or costs are shared, and how you will track which sales came through the partnership.
• How customer data is handled, and that it is used only with customers' consent.
• Who handles complaints when something goes wrong.
• How long the trial runs and how either side can step out.

For anything involving shared money, liability or long commitments, ask a lawyer and an accountant to review the terms.

Where partnerships go wrong

• Signing a broad agreement before testing anything small.
• Choosing partners because you like them, not because their customers fit.
• One side doing all the work and quietly resenting it.
• Not measuring, so after a few months nobody knows whether it worked.

You can approach partners yourself. Help is useful for mapping the customer journey, shortlisting partners, preparing the proposal and setting up tracking. That is part of my business development service.

Your first step: one small pilot

Write down three businesses that serve your customers just before or just after you do. Pick the one you know best, propose a single joint offer for a month or two, and agree beforehand how you will both count the results. If you want help preparing the proposal, contact me.