Choose Your Partners Well

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. 

Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

Winston Churchill

You can’t make good wine with bad grapes - no matter how good a vintner you might be, how much time you have or your level of experience.

In the same vein, you can’t make a good deal with a bad guy. It doesn’t work.

All too often, affiliate partners, especially people who might be newer to the industry, are desperate to make JV deals to promote their products. They fail to vet their partners and end up in relationships with the wrong people, people who exaggerate their numbers, don’t tell the truth or fail to live up to their commitments. We’ve all done it once or twice, accidentally or otherwise and it can be the kiss of death in an industry that is built on relationships.

Here’s the part that those people miss completely. When you don’t do what you say you will do and when you don’t come through for your partners, in almost no time flat, the entire industry knows about it. How many partners do you think you’ll get moving forward?

Although most of us will refrain from saying negative things about people in public, behind closed doors and among trusted allies, the word gets out - and it’s almost always a story about some person who failed someone else, and all of the juicy details of how it happened, how much money was lost, how much aggravation it caused and more. No one ever forgets the story and the name of the perpetrator is forever ingrained as someone to avoid at all costs.

There’s another group worth avoiding like the plague. Those who fight to win at the expense of everyone else, who feel that business is a win-lose proposition where someone has to end up on the short end in order for the other side to win. By definition, the JV marketing space is about win-win and building long-term strategic partnerships that endure and turn into recurring revenue for all.

The solution to avoiding this is both straightforward and prophetic. Be the person that others want to work with, who say good things about you and recommend you. Build that reputation of integrity and success so that it becomes easy for people to say “yes” to the chance to work with you. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as one good partner recommends you to another and another and so on.

After all, that is the true meaning of “joint” ventures.

Glen Ledwell is the co-founder of JV Hacking, the revolutionary program and software that teaches affiliates how to make a fortune doing Joint Venture Marketing. Find out more at www.JVHacking.com.