Love to hear your comments below.
I’ve been running my own businesses now since 1997. I’ve started 10 different businesses and kept 5 over the years. They don’t always work out quite as planned.
One of the strategies that I’ve employed when growing overseas is partnering with local companies.
OK, my own businesses are all service related, management consulting, training and the like. And we are talking 7 or 8 figure businesses here, not large Corporates.
And your experiences might differ of course depending on the type of business you have.
So with all those caveats….I’ll continue.
I have taken my businesses overseas a few times. Some times it worked and sometimes not.
Here’s a summary of what I’ve found.
What Helps Makes it Work
- Having a local partner you can trust 100% and that shares your core values.
- Having a local partner that is already engaged in a similar or complimentary business with a similar target market.
- A clear vision on what you will be offering jointly.
- A detailed business plan that needs to include elements such as:
- Who own’s the customer relationship.
- Pricing policies.
- Cost splits
- Income splits
- IP ownership
- Quality control
- ‘Trying Out’ working together before making anything formal.
Where’s it hasn’t worked out for me in the past, some of the challenges were:
- Client work had to be delivered in a language that my senior staff were not proficient in. Obvious I know! But it meant that quality control was very hard.
- The local business culture was very different to ours and in particular clashed with our preferred way of doing business.
I only raise this as a topic, to hopefully generate some interest and comment, because on a weekly basis I’m approached to ask if I would like to Partner with different companies.
Have you had similar experiences? Has it worked well for you?
Best Regards,
Rob O’Byrne
