Unlocking Organizational Growth: Strategic Partnerships For SMBs

May 16, 2024 By Johan Curtis No Comments 6 minutes

As a large organization serving small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), it’s important to stand out in a competitive market and deliver exceptional value to your customers. But constantly innovating on your own can be exhausting, especially when you’re resource-drained and budget-constrained. That’s where strategic partnership might become useful. Strategic partnership helps you unlock new innovation and provide that added value your SMB clients are expecting, without taking on too much risk or spending extravagant amounts on R&D.

Strategic Partnerships For SMBs 900

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In this blog, we’ll explore the idea of strategic partnerships, discuss the benefits they offer, give a step-by-step guide on how to form one, and provide a real-life example of a strategic partnership that drives success for both parties and their customers.

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What Are Strategic Partnerships?

Strategic partnerships are a relationship between two or more companies who have complementary products or services that aim to achieve a mutually beneficial goal. Commonly referred to as an alliance or a joint venture, these partnerships go beyond casual collaborations—they require a high level of trust, open communication, and a long-term commitment.

Different from a merger for example, each party remains independent but shares with the other their skills, resources, and expertise to propel business goals forward and reach mutual success.

What Are The Benefits Of Strategic Partnerships?

Strategic partnerships offer a plethora of advantages to large organizations serving SMBs, including:

Access to new markets: A strategic partnership allows you to access your partner’s customer base, expanding your reach and enabling you to tap into new markets.
Resource sharing: These types of partnerships encourage you to share resources such as technology, knowledge, and talent, which, in turn, lead to cost savings and increased efficiency.
Innovation and expertise: Collaborating with partners allows you to bring innovative and fresh new solutions to your SMB clients, especially when partnering with an expert.
Risk mitigation: Partnering up means sharing risks with a partner, which can reduce your exposure to market volatility, making it easier to handle uncertainty.
Scalability: Partnerships offer the ability to scale when you need to. You can start small and grow as you need with your partner’s support.

How To Create A Successful Strategic Partnership

Creating a successful strategic partnership requires careful planning, clear communication, and a shared vision for mutual success. Here are some essential steps to guide you through the process:

Define Your Objectives And Criteria

Before seeking out potential partners, it’s crucial to clearly define your objectives and criteria for a successful partnership. Try to answer these questions:

What specific goals do you hope to achieve?
What qualities are you looking for in a partner?
What products or services complement yours?

By answering these questions, you can ensure you’re searching for the right partner and avoid wasting your time on companies that don’t align with your goals or your products/services.

Establish Trust And Communication

Once you’ve chosen a partner, building trust is essential. Start by establishing open and transparent communication channels with potential partners. Be honest about your goals, expectations, and any concerns you may have, this will allow for both parties to clear the air.

Invest time in getting to know each other’s teams and building rapport before formalizing the partnership. Not only that but ensure roadmaps and internal processes are shared with each other so that things run smoothly as the partnership goes on.

Develop A Comprehensive Partnership Agreement

To formalize the partnership and protect the interests of all parties involved, develop a comprehensive partnership agreement. This legally binding document should outline the terms and conditions of the partnership, including roles and responsibilities, decision-making processes, financial arrangements, and risk management processes. Seek legal advice to ensure that the agreement is fair and legally binding.

Nurture The Relationship

Once the partnership is established, invest time and effort into nurturing the relationship. Maintain regular communication with your partner (we recommend monthly meetings at least), address any issues or concerns promptly, and celebrate successes together.

Keep the communication focused on concerns and issues, as well as wins and successes. It’s not uncommon for a partner to spend a meeting or two (or more) boasting about their accolades and accomplishments without addressing any pressing items at hand, so make sure you can reel your partner in and keep them focused on your shared goal.

Evaluate And Adapt

Periodically, at least once a quarter, evaluate the partnership’s progress against your predefined KPIs and objectives. Identify any areas for improvement or potential challenges and work together with your partner to address them.

Be flexible and willing to adapt your approach as needed to ensure the partnership remains successful in the long term. Having said that, you also need to be able to identify when the partnership isn’t working so that you can part ways amicably.

A Strategic Partnership In Action: inTandem & SBTPG

Santa Barbara TPG, a company providing tax-related financial products and services to SMBs, was looking to diversify and expand its small business offering when they began working on a strategic partnership with inTandem in 2020.

The inTandem platform is a complete business management solution designed for small businesses. It fully encompasses all aspects of running a small business from managing scheduling and clients, to collecting payments, sending email campaigns, and everything in between.

SBTPG elected to go with the inTandem Complete program, where the inTandem team would become an extension of their existing teams and help them go-to-market faster and more seamlessly.

This type of strategic partnership enabled SBTPG to gain access to inTandem’s wealth of experience and knowledge in the SMB space, minimize risk, and scale as they needed.

They began offering the inTandem platform as a white-labeled platform to their SMBs called Marketing Pro, helping their small business clients thrive year-round (not just during tax season) and grow their businesses without the headache of administrative paperwork.

Since then, SBTPG has been successfully selling Marketing Pro and has enjoyed the fact that inTandem has become an integral part of their marketing, product, operations, and support teams.

Summarizing Strategic Partnerships: Paving The Way For Better SMB Solutions

There’s no shortage of benefits strategic partnerships have for large organizations serving small businesses. From expanding their offering with little risk and scaling as they need to access new audiences, know-how, tech, and support, strategic partnerships are a great way for businesses to keep innovating and bringing top-notch solutions to their SMB clients.

SBTPG saw the potential of a strategic partnership with inTandem and went for it. Today, their Marketing Pro solution helps small tax businesses stay relevant all year round, growing their business even when tax season is out.

So, if you’re looking to innovate and bring new solutions to market, whether your audience be SMBs or anyone else, a strategic partnership is a great place to start.