How do I find credible Business Partners?

Question

Within my particular company niche I was wondering what are some good ways to find credible companies to partner with?

Answer 1

What is your company niche? and what kind of partnership are you looking for? productive, technological, commercial or just financial.

Word of mouth apart, internet can give you a lot of information through niche forum and websites, if you make your query as much specific as you can.

Another good way could be the use of networking websites like LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse, Xing, Viadeo or, for smaller business Face book and similar.

Once you find a potential partner and in  order to define him/her as credible it is always better to ask a professional to provide a due diligence on partner company, mainly when the potential partner is in a different country.

In any case, if your potential partner is an established business,  you need AT LEAST to have their incorporation certificates ,  three years audited balance sheets, you need to visit their facilities with an expert technician, to meet them personally, to ask for third parties (possibly banks and auditing firms) references.

Of course if you are looking for an investor, a buyer of your business or, lets say, any kind of business relationship unbalanced in your favour, you can be cautious but you cannot be too demanding in terms of information you directly ask.

Answer 2

Why not go with http://sellit-right.com/

theyre good and aim to get you people.  I also suggest thourough advertising like creating a blog about your Biz too.

Answer 3

There are several free tools you can use to find out someone's reputation.

* Google Alerts

* Google Trends

* Technorati Alerts

http://www.strategicprofits.com/tools/re... generates a file you can put into a RSS reader which helps too.