Subscribe Feed (RSS)Business Tip: Always Familiarize Yourself With Potential Partners
June 14th, 2007 by Joshua Dorkin | Filed under Entrepreneurship.It seems that every day I’ve got a new lesson to share about “playing well with others.” Today’s lesson involves dealing with people who get in touch with you in order to forge a new business relationship. Over the past few weeks I’ve been working the phones very hard, making new contacts, and trying to establish new business relationships. In most occasions, I’ve been forced to leave a voicemail or email with the potential partner letting them know who I am, my website URL, and what I’m interested in.
Sadly, in many occasions , I’ve been able to get these people on the phone after a few days or so, but they have no idea who I am or what my website is about . . .
You would think it would be logical to find out more about someone who contacts you in an effort to partner with you, but I guess it is not that obvious. I’ve got to tell you that it is really difficult to have a conversation with someone and pitch something to them if they keep asking what your website does. It has happened twice today already!
Since it apparently not obvious to everyone out there, I’ll put it in easy to understand words:
Always do your research on potential partners before talking to them!
What do you think?
good gracious! thanks for this informative information.keep it up,goahead.
Par for the course..
Friend of mine said in 2007, we have information overload. So many deals, communication mediums, etc…can blow the average person’s sockets..
No wonder they can’t figure out their own VM messages..
Even though we have so many ways of communicating with others, we can never really tell who is truly trustworthy until we talk or meet with them. The internet can only tell us so much about a person and what they are capable of. *=)… it is a great way to make the initial connection though!
[...] over at Time For Blogging has a great post on familiarizing yourslef with potential partners. As a small businessman myself, I can tell you first hand it’s important to learn all you can [...]
“Friend of mine said in 2007, we have information overload. So many deals, communication mediums, etc…can blow the average person’s sockets..”
That’s true. There’s too much information coming our way and our brains have a limited asimilation capacity…
Research on the potential partners is always a must!
Tim Ferris talks about information addiction in his book The 4 Hour Work Week. It’s worth looking at; the strategies really work.
Speaking of partners- mine are my brothers. It can be a good things sometimes, but working with family can be tough. We can get a little lazy and off track at times!
This reminds me of a business partner that I had. It was a bad choice because he didn’t hold up his side of the bargain and it destroyed a lot of trust. It is so important to test the waters and find the right person to partner with.