When choosing a business partner, if you’re not careful and studious in your picking process, you’ll end up getting stuck with an unmotivated, unskilled, and untrustworthy worker. If that were to be the case, untold amounts of damage could be done to your career prospects going forward.
You don’t want a bad business partner dragging you down, do you? Of course you don’t, which is why you need to choose one that shares your values and is going to be willing to help you grow in a professional sense.
To find three things you simply must do when choosing a business partner, make sure to read on.
Consider a number of critical traits
The skills and expertise that your business partner brings to the table aren’t the only things that will impact the work that you perform together — his or her traits will have a massive effect in this instance, too. If this person is a serial liar, for example, how will you ever know if you are actually on course to meet your deadlines? Without this kind of transparency, the standard of your work would be sure to drop.
Quite simply, when searching for the perfect business partner, you must consider the following five critical traits:
- Trust
- Work ethic
- Money handling
- Ego
- Bias
Ensure they are a great communicator
As you will be working closely with one another in order to reach your shared goal, above all else, your business partner must be a great communicator. They must be able to get all of their points across clearly and coherently, and they must be willing to stay in contact with you throughout the duration of each working day.
A few questions you could ask, either outright or subliminally, to your potential partner to see if they are a great communicator include:
- How do you build workplace rapport?
- How would you simplify a complex issue to a client?
- How do you persuade people to see things your way?
Perform due diligence on them
You can’t afford to enter into a business partnership that is just going to waste your time, effort, and finances. For this reason, you should never have any qualms when it comes to performing a due diligence test on your potential partners. This course of action might seem extreme, but it is the only way you are going to know for sure that the person you are entering into a partnership with is who they claim to be.
LexisNexis, a provider of due diligence Hong Kong services is a company that you should consider turning to in this instance. Their compliance, research, and media intelligence solutions will provide you with a far greater insight into your potential partner then you simply meeting with them — he or she could say anything to make you want to partner up with them, but what you really need is evidence that proves they can back up what they say.
By failing to take the above advice, you could very well find yourself lumbered with a business partner that brings nothing to the table. Be sure, then, to heed all you have read above and put it into practice the next time you’re in search of a new partner.