Business development partnerships are quickly replacing traditional resourcing plans to keep pace with marketplace demands for agile, flexible responses. Through these partnerships, businesses gain access to fresh talent and a startup mentality that infuses innovative culture and skills into existing teams without the burdens associated with traditional headcount.
Conventional talent acquisition methods require extensive, often painful, recruitment methods that promote long-term commitments and discourage team flexibility. This limits the ability of the business to meet changing needs and creates an environment that promotes reactive resource planning over proactive planning.
Business development partnerships provide a reliable, low-cost resource plan that allows companies to apply talent when the need demands. Crucial to the success of the partnership is a strategy that prizes clear communication of project needs and expectations.
To ensure that your partnership is success:
1. Articulate Business Needs. Conduct a detailed analysis of current needs and projected future needs. Translate this list into structured requirements that clearly link business needs to partner requirements.
2. Define the Need/Role. Determine the skill level and business involvement expectations. Will the partnership fill a critical, specialist or operational role?
3. Create a Comprehensive Picture of an Ideal Fit. Traditional recruitment methods cannot begin without a clearly defined job description. Apply the same care when defining potential business development partner’s qualities, skills, experience, team composition and strategic offerings.
4. Prioritize Requirements. Further categorize this comprehensive list by breaking requirements into wants, needs and amazing. The requirements that belong in “wants and needs” are easily determined. However, there may be some qualities that are so amazing the business would consider a partnership even if a few needs were missing. These are the traits that clearly give any potential partner a leading edge.
Business development partnerships provide an excellent alternative to traditional staffing methods which can be time consuming and limiting to long-term, strategic business growth.
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