Strategic partnerships often become very important to businesses. Your strategic partners offer you services to keep you survive and outrun your competition and in return they expect usually the same thing from you. For long-term success and growth of a company strategic partnerships help a lot. Here are some tips for choosing the right partners.

• First thing, make sure you need partnerships for enhancing your functionality.
• Second recognize your needs; what services you want, what solutions can help you in performing better, etc.
• Always short-list a handful of possible partners and then negotiate with them.
• Estimate the advantages you will get with each partner and in return what they want from you.
• It is good to check the history of your possible partners, specially look for their responsibility, reputation in public, level of service, their partners, financial stability, adoption to new technologies and strategies, etc.
• When entering in partnerships, decide and negotiate the rules of the partnership; its period, expected return, what happens if one partner goes backwards from the rules, etc.
• It is good to first enter a very-short term partnership, and extend it if you are pleased with the partnership.