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It’s Only Common Sense: 7 Characteristics of a Good Rep Partner

When you struck out on your own and started your rep firm, you had to decide just how large you wanted to firm to be. Many people just strike out on their own and have a solo act for a while. After a time, once the company has successfully launched, they will find some appropriate partners to help them grow the firm. Others join forces with one or two other people and start a company together. But either way, every rep firm is going to want to grow and the only way to do that is to find some good partners.

Many of the larger firms will hire salespeople and treat them as any company would treat employees, rather than partners, and there is nothing wrong with that. Today, I’m going to discuss partners and leave the hiring of employees for another day.

So, how do you find these partners? What credentials should you look for in a partner? What do you want from a partner and what do you expect that partner to bring to your company? These are all questions that you must ask yourself even before beginning your search for a likely partner.

Here are seven characteristics of the right rep partner, one who will help you grow your rep firm.

1. Offerings: What can a partner bring to the party? Why do you want a new partner in the first place? Is it to grow your firm by getting more customers, which the right partner can bring? Is it so that you will have someone to share ideas with? Or is it someone to share and merge networks with? Maybe you are looking for a partner who will bring some much-needed cash to the company. Whatever the reason, be sure of what you want in a partner; it will make your search that much easier.
2. Chemistry: You and your partner must have the right chemistry. Selecting a new partner is quite like choosing a spouse, because in a sense getting married is precisely what you’re doing. You must like this person enough to get along every day. If you don’t really like the person, then don’t collaborate because it will never get better. Don’t think that the person will change once he is a partner. Once he is a partner, he will not change and you can get stuck working with some you cannot stand.
3. Customers: Does the person come with his own set of customers and, probably more importantly, products and services that complement the products and services you are now selling? Is what this person brings to the company going to make it bigger and better than either of you could have done alone?
4. Hard-working: Is this new partner hard working? Is he as hard-working as you are? Watching someone work 30 hours a week while you are working 80 hours a week and then splitting the money equally is not my idea of fun and it shouldn’t be yours either. Make sure that this prospective partner has the same work ethic that you have.
5. Honest, credible, reliable, and dependable: Yes, a partner must be these things, not to mention having the same moral compass, values, and ethics that you have. The person you choose as a partner must share your values. A potential partner’s way of doing business must match yours, or there’ll be big trouble in River City.
6. Vision: Does this person share your same growth vision? Do you want to keep the firm relatively small while he is looking at creating a multi-territorial firm? Does he like to keep a certain amount of money in the bank as a buffer for a rainy day? Or does he like to see what happens and use up the money as soon as it comes in? This one will kill you in you are not in sync.
7. Industry experience: Is the prospective partner as well versed in your industry as you are…or are you planning to teach him the ropes? This is a dangerous game to play. Your partner should be as experienced in sales as you are. Unless—and this is important—unless you are partnering so that he can bring in an entirely new line of products addressing an entirely new, but related marketplace. For example, if a person who has spent his entire career in contract assembly decides to partner with someone who has career-long experience in the bare board industry, they can really have something bigger than the either one could build alone, once they develop the partnership.

And of course, there is one more (always under-promise and over-deliver): You must make sure that you trust the person you’re partnering with. I mean trust this person with your life…because that, in the end, is really what you’re doing. It’s simple: Never partner with a person you cannot trust.

It’s only common sense.