Before entering into a joint venture marketing agreement, consider the following five steps as a strategic guide for coming up with a plan and agreement that will work for you.

Step 1: Research potential partners.
Make sure that you do a little research on those you think you might want to reach out to as potential joint venture marketing partners. For example, if you sell printers, you might want to consider partners in the ink industry or maybe even paper distributors. Whatever the case may be, narrow down what it is you are looking for before you decide on who it is you want to work with. Once you have your choices narrowed down, then do some research on who is the best in their industry. If you’ve decided to go with a paper distributor, find out who has the highest sales and the best reviews. After all, you’ll want to know the best if you want to be the best.

Step 2: Open the lines of communication.
Now that you’ve decided who you would like to work with, you’ll have to take the first step in building the relationship. Open the lines of communication by sending an initial email and follow it up with a telephone call to make it more personal. You’ll want to introduce yourself, explain what you do and why you are contacting this person. Gaining that initial contact can be the most difficult part, but it is only half the battle. Convincing your potential partner just how lucrative a joint venture marketing opportunity can be will be your next challenge.

Step 3: Define your goals
If all goes well, you will have used your business savvy and marketing expertise to turn your once potential partner into a teammate. Now it is time to get down to business and begin thinking about the goals of this relationship and how you will reach those goals. Hammer out all of these details now so that you can focus on the success of your campaign without getting tangled in the details later on. Be sure to define your goals, set your strategy and most importantly, get on the same page.

Step 4: Know your role
Discuss what you expect out of this relationship, both personally and professionally. You will want to be perfectly clear as to what is expected of each of you. Decide from the beginning what
your roles will be. Will you share all responsibilities? How much is to be expected from each of you? Also, make a list of dos and don’ts, outlining what will and will not be acceptable as part of
the agreement. Again, you will need to be on the same page with your joint venture marketing partners and work as a team in order to be successful.

Step 5: Stick to the plan
Once you have discussed what your goals are, what your strategy will be and how you plan to execute the best possible joint venture marketing plan, it is critical that you stick to the agreement. In other words, be true to your word and expect the same of your partner.

A well organized, well thought out joint venture marketing agreement will produce results every single time.