Strategic partnerships help business grow

In its simplest form, a strategic alliance occurs any time you form an understanding and relationship with another person or business to work for your mutual benefit. When you ally yourself with another business, you automatically come into contact with new people, new suppliers, new customers and new ways of doing things. The contact alone should stimulate your creativity. A true strategic alliance can yield tremendous rewards.

A common complaint of small businesses is the roller coaster ride of cash flow. Most businesses have busy times and slow times.

This happens for a multitude of reasons including seasonality, product mix and/or availability of staff. One of the most obvious reasons is the fact that while you are busy doing the work, you don't have time to look for new work or new customers.

Often as a small business owner you wear all the hats. When a project comes your way, often it has a rush deadline. You spend 12- to 15-hour days including weekends to get the project done on schedule.

The money is great for the month that it keeps you busy but once the project is finished, you spend the next four weeks looking for new work. The peaks and valleys of your workload can wreak havoc with your cash flow and your blood pressure.

What you can use is a strategic alliance with another business. Identifying another professional (in the same business) can more than double your capacity. If you have the assistance of another experienced specialist in the same field to help with the job, although you share some of the income, you also get extra help to complete the project on time (or even earlier than promised) as well as the time to continue developing new business for the slow periods. It also means that when your strategic partner is busy, he/she will ask you to assist in much the same way.

Strategic alliances can level the peaks and valleys of business operations.

There is much more to gain than to lose. Today, identify two potential allies that you could have partnered with on a current or recent project.

Be creative and be successful.

Jimmie Wilkins is the director of the Chemeketa Small Business Development Center. The Small-Business Adviser column is produced by the center and appears each Tuesday. Questions can be faxed to (503) 581-6017, e-mailed to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or phoned in to (503) 399-5088.