Spread Your Wings with Strategic and Joint Venture Partners

Both Joint Venture (JV) and Strategic Partners are good ways to expand your business.  Good Joint Venture and Strategic Partners will share the same target clients as you, but they will offer different services.  This is a simple and effective way to expand your customer base into areas outside your current reach and build your business.

How do you go about finding potential Joint Venture or Strategic Partnerships?  The technology available on the Internet right now makes finding companies and people to connect with a lot simpler.  Your partners are going to benefit from connecting with you, just like you benefit from connecting with them. It’s a win-win situation.  Using a service like LinkedIn makes finding potential partners easy.  Simply fill out the search form and viola, here come potential partnerships.

I work with a lot of clients who are always looking for people to connect with.  Feel free to send me an invitation on LinkedIn so that you can share in my network and we can expand together.  My address is http://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferdavey.

How do you go about using the search on LinkedIn to find potential JV partners?  Don’t let this technology intimidate you.  It is simple and effective.  To create a perfect search, simply log on to your LinkedIn account then click the down arrow next to “People” and choose the “Advanced People Search.”

This advanced searching technique will allow you to narrow it down to locations, companies, industry, interests, schools, and even languages.  This search function makes it simple to target the people you are looking for.

This search function on LinkedIn is not too much different than your typical Internet browser.  If you use quotation marks around your phrase, it will search for that exact phrase.  So a writer looking for self-help publishers would type in “self-help publishers” in order to specifically target that area.

Sometimes these searches will bring up a ton of results.  A search for self-help publishers might bring up a number of counselors.  LinkedIn makes it easy to exclude those results by adding the word “NOT” to your search.  You can type in “self-help publishers” NOT counselor.  This will exclude all the counselors and narrow your search even more.

Adding the word “OR” to the search will expand it.  The good thing is that it will expand, but will expand under your criteria.  If you are looking for both self-help publishers and self-help coaches, you can use the “OR” word in the search to include that extra possibility.  You can even type in “self-help publisher” OR coaches NOT counselor.

Specifically expand your search even more with the word “AND.”  If you are looking for independent publishers you can add the “AND” phrase to your search.  LinkedIn lets you search a wide array of people, while keeping it specific enough not to waste time.  For example:

“Self-help publisher” OR coach AND independent NOT counselor will look for independent self-help publishers and coaches who are not counselors.  It may seem confusing, but it is easy to learn.  Once you get the hang of it searching becomes fun.  Soon you will be looking for people in your area and who share common interests.  Your partnerships and client base will be expanding.

If your search is returning the desired results, make sure to save it.  LinkedIn will even re-run the search and email you results.

This is a simple system to keep your marketing consistent and worry free.  Just take the time to set it up correctly and it will be a breeze.