Partnerships and Ego Trips
Let go of ego or ‘let go of my ego’. Is this correct? Do egos enter into partnership agreements? They certainly do form the nature of the business relationship. We will examine partnerships and ego trips.
You may be an entrepreneur or a sole proprietor or howsoever you choose to phrase your obscure business entity. You get many business leads, but you are not a sales person. You have highly specialized skills in your area of work. Therefore, you are confident in your abilities to achieve greatness and generate revenue. It seems, though that you may need to form a business alliance; a so-called partnership. Now enters the scenario of ‘partnerships and ego trips’.
If you are requesting the assistance of a business partner to share part of the work process for your company you can bank on personalities participating in a realm where you had formerly thought only ‘common sense’ or smarts prevailed. You were mistaken if you thought you could be cold and unfeeling and all about the money. Once you acquire a partner you join forces with another personality in a battle of sensibilities.
Before you agree to any terms verbally, jot down notes on all discussions that occur during your partnership interviews. Then send an e-mail containing the notes to your potential partner and ask this person to sign off or agree to the points noted. It is very important that you also create a detailed partnership agreement or contract for service prior to assigning any leads and / or work.
Where money is involved greed is sure to show its face. Even if the leads seem to have no realizable value, once you have assigned prospective clients to you new business partner, surely the partner will determine their own value of the potential deal. Certainly any proposal will be one-sided in one’s own favour when possible money is to be gained.
Be sure that you have properly positioned yourself in the business relationship. You should appear and sound confident in your own abilities, at all times. Any sense of a lack of confidence is a certain weakness in business matters. When you submit the proposed agreed or partnership contract be sure to emphasize simplicity in the terms used and in the overall contents of the document. Less complications means less discussions on fine points and more clarity.
It is essential that you are clear about the money that you are expecting for each realized or closed deal. Once there is money at issue egos will surface and disagreements will certainly erupt. When this happens all you can do is draft a new agreement. But is it going to be more difficult to obtain agreement for your benefit once potential money is at play.
