Does your business develop strategic partnerships?

I’m in Atlanta this week for the Solo PR Summit, where I had the pleasure of presenting this morning on the topic of strategic partnerships. We looked at why a partnership might make sense for your business, how to identify your best partner (and why paying attention to red flags matters), lessons learned, and advice for developing a partnership plan that works.

It all starts with why.

In the session, I identified four reasons to consider a strategic partnership:

• Growth (think market share)
• New Markets (geographic or sectoral)
• New Products (e.g., I had a joint venture to develop a newsletter about the Russian real estate market)
• New Lines of Business (e.g., I co-launched a social business line)

Here’s the complete presentation. Have you had (or do you currently have) a strategic partnership? What’s worked and what have you learned?

Photo by familymwr (Flickr).