Here’s How to Choose a Business Partner Wisely
Because your dream team also extends to your collaborations.
We’ve often said that one bad apple can ruin your whole company. Whether it’s an employee, a business partner, or a service provider, you always want to have the right people on your team.
Before getting into a business partnership, you want to vet every aspect, like hiring an employee. The same goes for service providers.
We’ve heard horror stories of clients who’ve hired companies that ended up stealing from them. It was only until we verified their social security numbers that we realized these were scammers in disguise.
So how do you prevent this from happening to you? Here are a few easy tips based on our experience.
Ask to see their work
While it may seem redundant to mention this, it’s worth driving the point home.
Most companies and individuals are willing to show their work upfront through a portfolio or case studies. A construction company, for instance, may showcase images of the infrastructure they’ve put up on their site, and design firms usually have a compilation of projects they’ve created for clients.
If a company or individual cannot immediately show their services to the public (like an IT system or financial service), they would most likely list the clients they’ve already worked for.
Just as you wouldn’t invest money in something that has nothing to show for it, you don’t want to do business with a company or individual who doesn’t have work you can reference. Even startups or freelancers have something to show, sometimes through personal projects.
When you see their work, you:
Of course, you don’t want to end just there. Some shady businesses or individuals may find ways to fake their work or talk you up so you won’t think twice about availing their services. This is where the next step comes in.
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Ask for references
And not just any reference. Just as you wouldn’t encourage a candidate to send their mother’s or best friend’s contact details, you don’t want your business partner or service provider to send you references that have nothing to do with their work.
Asking for references is the first step towards verifying whether your potential business partner or service provider has done the work they do and whether they did it at the scope they claimed.
While it might seem a little intrusive for some, most people would be willing to give those references provided they aren’t tied up with any confidentiality agreements. The best part is that asking for references lets you weed out sketchy dealings.
But how do you know if the references they give are worth pursuing? Make sure they have these three factors:
It doesn’t end there, though. If you want to be extra sure about who you’re doing business with, take this final step.
Verify important information
Some might find this step superfluous, we’d argue it’s one of the most crucial steps.
Simply put, if you can verify any important details they give you with a government agency (like their SSN, business registration number, or company address), that’s one big step towards knowing whether you should work with them or not.
The good news is this is something you can do by yourself, if you’re up to the challenge. With everything accessible online, it’s not hard to pull up the details at your own time. But, of course, this can be terribly time-consuming. And expensive, especially since some of the information isn’t available without payment.
In that case, consider getting a service provider that can help do the checks for you, so you don’t have to worry about compiling all the checks by yourself. Of course, not without vetting them through the same steps in the process.