Find Strength in Complimentary Joint Venture Partners

A joint venture is a strategic alliance arrangement between two or more businesses. The nature of a JV is that it's mutually beneficial to both parties and allows the JV partners to continue running their own respective businesses. However, how can a joint venture be mutually beneficial to two independent and separate business entities?

Who is an Ideal Fit for Your Business?

If you want to consider whom you can partner up with in a JV arrangement, start by identifying your target customer and market. Who purchases your products or services? Are they younger, more outgoing spenders or perhaps a more conservative, older, and wealthier clientele?

Once you have solidly identified your main customer, it is just a matter of discovering and identifying other types of markets that your customers share. These are the markets from which you want to carefully hand pick a suitable JV partner.

Finding a Complimentary Service in Your Industry

One good example of an industry with complimentary services is real estate sales. A real estate broker's main job is to list and show homes for sale to potential customers. However, they can increase business and contacts by teaming up with partners that have complimentary services needed by new homebuyers. For instance, a real estate agent could form a joint venture with a mortgage broker where it's agreed to cross promote each other's services. In many cases, new homebuyers look for a home before getting approved for a loan. In this instance, the real estate agent can simply refer his or her client to the mortgage broker as a good starting place for a loan application.

Ways to Form a Beneficial Joint Venture

What other services or products would be good for your customers or clients? Be creative and you'll be able to come up with many suitable complimentary products or services in your industry or closely related industry. Use your creativity to form JVs so you can:

- Form complimentary products or services and offer package deals.

- Create joint seminars and promote yourselves jointly to a specific marketplace.

- Write articles and post them in each other's newsletters and websites.

- Give special offers to your JV partner's customers and have them do the same.

- Include a special offer or coupon for your product or service within their client mailings.

- Add links to and from each other's web sites.

- Co-author a helpful "how to" booklet and then offer it as an exclusive gift to your mutual clients.

- Agree to refer clients to each other's business for a nominal "referral fee".

These are just quick examples of how a JV in a complementary industry can help your business. It's also important to make sure you thoroughly know and understand what you recommend to your clients and customers. Try your potential JV's products yourself. Would you use them? Be sure to protect your own business reputation if you recommend other products and services.

Creative JV arrangements can give a big boost to revenues if done properly. If you use your own creativity and savvy business acumen, you can discover a bountiful number of ways that a JV can help you.