Interviewing a partner

Vetting Partners

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Deciding if you want to award partner status to a company isn’t something you should take lightly. The company is going to be representing you, they’ll be the majority of your clients experience with your brand. If they don’t live up to your clients expectations, it’s your brand that’ll be damaged. Vetting partners is no different (or less important) from interviewing employees,  you need to make sure it’s a good fit. Partner AnalysisSo how do you decide who to work with? Language is an enormous barrier, so it’s always a relief when you find someone that speaks the same language, especially if they’re a smooth talker. Whilst communication is important, a critical review of your prospective partner can provide some meaningful insights. Here are a few questions you might want to ask:

  1. Revenue & percentage revenue from your target audience; it might be an awkward question to ask, but you should get relevant specifics. Total revenue will give you an indication of their size within your industry, and financial capability to deal with your projects. The percentage revenue will indicate what quantum of their business overlaps with your industry, this can be exceedingly helpful in gauging how focused your partner is on your target segment (ie: US$100m with $1m from hotels vs. US$50m with $40m from hotels). If your partner isn’t ready to divulge approximate information, you should consider why not.
  2. Locations & Staff strength; you’ll need to know exactly where your partners offices are, where they have staff, and what locations that can easily service. Bear in mind that different countries have different transport systems, so 10 miles in one country might be a 10 minute journey, but could be a 2 hour journey in another. Watch out for “affiliate” offices, a partner may want to demonstrate a larger reach, and might include their own affiliates or partners that they operate through. This could have substantial implications on pricing and quality of service, so carefully validate how they achieve their stated reach.
  3. Software platforms; whilst it might seem trivial at first, understanding what software and technology your partners use will be important once you begin work. If they aren’t able to read your files, or can’t send you information in a format that your team can use you’ll end up with problems. This may also have implications on their level of professionalism.
  4. Certifications/training; whilst client lists and references go a long way, it’s important to understand the calibre of staff your partner has. This is especially important in roles that require specific expertise (programming, design, etc.). It can have substantial implications on delivery capability. Watch out for bottlenecks, ie: large sales team, but very few qualified designers. Ask how they cope when they have large, or multiple projects running.
  5. Operating philosophies & culture; beyond any hard metric, your partners philosophy, culture and way of working should be well understood. This is something that your client will undoubtedly notice about your partner, so it’s important that your philosophies and working culture are matched by your partner. Without matching philosophies, you’re likely to encounter difficulties when trying to resolve project issues, or unforeseen scenarios with clients.
  6. Industry associations; whilst not a critical factor, the industry / association memberships that your partner enjoys can provide a good reflection of their professionalism. Be careful, as many association memberships just require annual fees, but some have minimum attendances, require minimum business volumes, or have other criteria that can help validate your partner.
  7. Client References; client lists can look impressive, but it’s important to understand what your partner actually did and how satisfied their clients have been. It might not always be easy to get a direct client contact for reference checks from your partner, but it’s worth asking for. Calling clients directly can be seen as a sign of bad faith, and in many instances might be fruitless – it can be very hard to find the right team or person for the validation, or the client may not disclose any information to 3rd parties. Even if you can’t get a client reference, ask around, hopefully someone you know (indirectly) will have some feedback they can give you.

If you’re uncomfortable asking some of these questions, consider how much more uncomfortable you’re going to be with a botched project and a partner that’s not being co-operative. It’s very important to know your partners, and establish communication channels with them before you begin a project. To make asking these questions a little easier, you could start by sending them an email request to fill out a partner profile form (here’s one that I use). What else would you like to know about your partners before they start handling your clients?