1. Do they already serve customers I want?
A strong answer: I can name the customers and how they reach them.
A warning sign: I assume they must.
Growth & Leadership Brief
How to Identify Strategic Partners Who Can Actually Grow Your Business
A good partner reaches customers you want, has something that complements what you do, and gains something real in return. Most partnerships fail on the last point.
1. The business problem
Who could we partner with, and what would make it worth their while?
Partnership ideas are plentiful: a well-known company, a friendly competitor, a supplier who knows everyone. Most produce meetings and few produce results, because the idea rests on what the partner could do for you, not on what is in it for them.
Identifying strong partners means working from the customer: who already serves the people you want, with something that complements yours and does not compete?
2. What the evidence can reveal
A partner screen asks:
- Information gap Customer overlap: do they serve the people you want to reach?
- Information gap Complementarity: do their offer and yours fit together without competing?
- Information gap Incentive: what would they gain, in money, customers, retention or reputation?
- Information gap Capacity and reliability: can they deliver what they promise, and have they done so before?
- Information gap Cultural and operational fit: how they treat customers and how they work.
A partner who lacks an incentive will not act, however enthusiastic the first meeting.
3. Investigate the problem
Illustrative An invented example. A bookkeeping firm wants to reach new small businesses. Three candidate partners: a business bank, a company-formation lawyer and a commercial real estate broker. The firm scores each on the five questions above from 1 to 5.
| Candidate | Customer overlap | Complementary | Their incentive | Reliability | Fit | Total (of 25) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business bank | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 19 |
| Formation lawyer | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 22 |
| Commercial broker | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 14 |
Illustrative The lawyer leads at 22: their clients are exactly the target, the services fit together, and the lawyer has a reason to want a bookkeeper to refer clients to, since their clients need one after formation. The broker scores low on incentive (2): they would gain little from the arrangement. The lesson is that the incentive column, the one founders skip, separates the promising from the merely friendly.
Information gap The scores in practice come from conversations and observation. Hypothesis The best partners are often adjacent businesses that meet your customers at a different moment in their journey, and who would be glad to solve their customers’ next problem.
4. Work through it yourself
Partner screening self-assessment
An interactive APIS tool for this topic is planned. Until it is built, this worksheet applies the same method: answer each question honestly about your own business and note what you cannot yet answer.
Answer about one candidate partner at a time.
Strong answers mean a candidate worth approaching. If you cannot state what they gain in their terms, do not approach yet: work that out first. Score three or four candidates to make the comparison honest.
5. Evaluate possible solutions
A short, structured screening saves wasted meetings.
6. What leadership should do next
Questions to answer
- Who serves my target customers at another moment?
- What would each gain?
- Who has delivered before?
- Who fits how I treat customers?
Data to gather
- Customer journey notes
- Candidate list
- References
- A value statement per candidate
Steps to take
- List candidates.
- Score them.
- Write each one’s gain.
- Approach the top two.
7. Engage Two Pillars
Plan Your Next Stage of Growth
Two Pillars can help owners and leadership teams assess expansion readiness, identify and structure strategic partnerships, manage partner relationships and decide when fractional executive support fits. A good first step is a partner screening exercise that scores candidates and states what each would gain.
Sources and data notes
- Every example, company and number in this article is an invented illustration. None of it is real data, a benchmark, or a forecast.
- Reviewed October 2026. This article describes an approach to investigation. It does not replace review by qualified professionals.