How to Write a Partnership Proposal

 

Mandy Bray

Partnerships generate $3.9 billion per year in the U.S. and supercharge the revenue of companies like Microsoft, Atlassian, and Shopify. Teaming up with another professional or company can multiply your capacity, expertise, and growth.

With so much at stake, approaching a potential partner can be intimidating. Whenever I make a business pitch, there are three items I work to perfect. First, an underlying relationship to build on. Second, a stellar verbal presentation for a pitch meeting. And third, a killer partnership proposal.

A partnership proposal is a powerful tool to showcase your professionalism and convince your potential partner why they should collaborate with you. I’ve compiled what you should include in your proposal, plus four partnership proposal templates to give you a head start.

What is a partnership proposal?

A partnership proposal is a document outlining the benefits, scope, and structure of a future collaboration between two businesses or individuals.

Most partnership collaborations begin with an idea and verbal discussions. “Hey, here’s a crazy idea. What if we…” If you don’t know the person, start with a warm intro email or phone call first.

A partnership proposal is the next step in the process, formalizing concepts to align goals and gain buy-in. While it isn’t a legal contract, it’s often a precursor to one.

Types of Business Partnerships

Before creating a business partnership proposal, it’s important to understand which type of partnership you want to pursue.

General Business Partnership

When two or more individuals enter a business agreement and share unlimited liability, you have a general business partnership. A proposal for a general business partnership should include the share of ownership, contributions of each partner, the distribution of profits and losses, and the terms for dissolution.

Joint Venture

A joint venture (JV) is an agreement between two companies to combine resources and expertise for a specific purpose. For instance, a global company might form a JV with a local company when bringing a product to a new country.

Limited Partnership

A limited partnership (LP) is a business partnership that includes at least one general partner and at least one limited partner. Limited partners have minimal liability and management oversight of the operations. An LP is common in single-purpose scenarios like a real estate transaction.

Limited Liability Partnership

The LLP structure is common in professional service fields such as law firms, doctor’s offices, and accounting. Similar to an LLC, a limited liability partnership (LLP) is an agreement between partners that grants them limited liability. LLP requirements vary by state.

Influencer Partnership

An influencer partnership is a limited-scope agreement between an influencer or creator and a brand to create and publish branded social media content.

Sponsorship Partnership

A sponsorship is a collaboration between businesses, nonprofits, or media companies where one company pays for access to promote their goods and services to the other company’s audience.

Components of a Partnership Proposal

When I write proposals, I always aim to personalize each one and find the right balance between personable and professional. While the nuances of each partnership model vary, there are a few common elements that every partnership business proposal should have.

Executive Summary

Hook your reader’s attention with a summary explaining the partnership concept, key benefits, and a table of contents.

Partners

List each partner with their contact and background information. Specify the role each will have, and whether they are a general or limited partner. Make it visual, with photos or logos.

Goals and Objectives

All good partnerships start with shared goals. Explain your goals and dreams for the partnership, from a high-level vision to specific objectives.

Audience

Share who your audience is and any key demographics. Make sure that your audience will fit with the partner’s audience, and vice-versa. An audience is a key selling point for partners, especially with influencer or sponsorship partnerships. Some brands go as far as account mapping to identify customer overlap, but general audience data can be as effective.

Scope of Work

Next, define the scope of work and projects to be covered with the partnership. If this is for a limited-scope project like an influencer collaboration, give a precise breakdown of project steps. If this is for a general partnership, JV, or LP, list target activities and deliverables and who is responsible for each. Give timelines as appropriate.

Benefits and Challenges

If you’ve ever written a business plan, you’re likely already familiar with the SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). Similar to this, give an abbreviated analysis of:

• Challenges that will need to be tackled.
• Benefits to the collaboration.
• Market research and industry analysis.

Legal and Financial Information

Propose terms and conditions for the partnership, like payment and revenue-sharing structures. Spell out who will own intellectual property generated by the company and how royalties will be distributed. Address how disputes or a partnership dissolution would be handled. ​​

How to Write a Partnership Proposal

To test this out, I wrote a general partnership proposal between a web designer and a web developer who want to team up to start a website studio. I used HubSpot’s partnership business proposal template to build a professional proposal outlining the partnership benefits and structure.

Here are the steps I took to create the proposal.

1. Outline the Benefits

To convince your partner, make the case why it’s worth them sharing their time (and profits) with you.

I started my proposal with an executive summary envisioning why the partnership would appeal to future clients. That leads into a “Benefits of Collaboration” section where I clearly outline the mutual advantages.

To make an effective proposal, show that you understand your partner’s motivations, mission, values, and goals. Here, I personalized my pitch with details about my future partner’s values, strengths, and achievements.

3. Showcase Your Value

While the main focus of your proposal should be on your partner’s motivations, you need to prove why you are the right partner for them — and no one else. Talk yourself up and demonstrate how your value proposition can enhance their value proposition. Here, I took a visual approach by showing the career achievements of one of the partners.

4. Outline the Structure

Now, it’s time for the nitty-gritty. Remember, this isn’t a contract, but it’s time to start giving shape to the partnership. Ask an attorney to consult on the best legal structure.

If this is a limited-scope partnership, break down all the little details — budget, timeline, roles, expectations, communication, and deliverables. Specify how disputes will be resolved if there are any.

5. Discuss and Negotiate

A partnership proposal is just one milestone in a partnership discovery process. Take your time setting the right terms and tone for the deal.

Once you’ve submitted a partnership proposal, welcome a dialogue and back-and-forth negotiation as you align your goals and values and settle on terms.

The proposal is a living document that you can update and replace with a formal agreement if all goes well.

Partnership Proposal Template

Take and adapt HubSpot’s free business proposal template for a quick way to get started.

I like this template because it’s easy to use and available in both Word and PDF formats.

The template comes with expert tips to guide you through each section, from understanding the problem to pitching the solution

Partnership Proposal Examples

If you’re looking for inspiration — and maybe some more templates — take a look at these stellar partnership proposals.

Partnership Proposal by Pitch

Format: Slide deck

What I like: Visuals that pop

A podcast network pitches a partnership with a creator in this fictional partnership. This colorful proposal by Pitch uses a slide format to outline a potential partnership. Pay attention to the “Values” and “Team” slides, putting the company’s best foot forward through text and visuals. I also like how they break up long walls of text with bullets, graphics, and photos.

The “Next Steps” section leads into action by making it easy to respond and say yes.

Business Partnership Proposal by PandaDoc

Format: PandaDoc (online or exportable to PDF)

What I like: Fillable sections

If you want to impress your partner with a professional document, take a gander at PandaDoc’s business partnership proposal template. It sprinkles tasteful design elements here and there to toe the line between buttoned-up and innovative. I particularly like the layout of the SWOT analysis and goals and objectives sections.

Fillable sections make it fast to populate. When you enter your partner’s name once, it enters it on every page it’s needed. And when your proposal is ready for a signature, you can e-sign right on the document.

Influencer Proposal Template by Beautiful.ai

Format: Slide deck

What I like: Animated elements

Most proposals aren’t printed anymore — they’re viewed on a computer or smartphone. So, why not create one that’s designed for it? Beautiful.ai’s influencer marketing proposal gives a gorgeous blueprint for a partnership between a brand and an influencer. This proposal covers everything an influencer might need to know about a campaign, from messaging to budget to the content review process.

The subtle animation on the graphics gives a nice touch, but the clear outline of goals and metrics is even better. The slides are also quick to customize with just a prompt powered by AI.

Partnership Proposal Tips

Brandice Daniel, CEO and founder of Harlem's Fashion Row (HFR) and author of Small Business, Big Partnership, shared how pivotal a proposal is in landing a partner.

“The partnership deck is so important. You’re basically saying to a brand, ‘You want to have a conversation with me and here’s why.’ You’re building credibility.”

Daniel also shared tips on the Earn Your Leisure podcast about what makes a great partnership proposal.

1. Presentation Matters

“The partnership proposal is like how you’re wrapping your company,” Daniel advises. “Consider getting a professional graphic artist to design your deck, and try to keep it to 10 pages.”

2. Highlight Your Audience

Daniel reminds us that, “At the end of the day, brands want to partner with your audience. The reason they’re going to partner with you is because they think they’re going to be able to get more business by working with you.” She recommends to “highlight who they are, what they do, and how they connect with your brand.”

3. Connect Outside of the Document

A proposal is just a tool — and how you connect outside of the document matters. “People underestimate human connection. If people get on the phone with you, if they’re feeling your vibe and they’re excited, it’s a different conversation,” says Daniel.

Scale Your Business With Partnerships

Partnerships are magical because they give you access to a new audience and expand your capacity and expertise. But finding a good fit can make the difference between a successful partnership and a failed one.

When done right, the proposal process surfaces priorities and values that inform whether the partnership should proceed. I was surprised to find that partnership proposals are such a unique blend of high-level vision and financial and legal details. Neither is more important than the other; both are needed to make a proposal effective.

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Business Model Canvas For Beginners. 8. Key Partnerships – Essential Tips For Partnering And Outsourcing

 In this section of the business model, I’ll show you the different types of partner relationships, how to decide what partners to choose and what to consider – the common mistakes that people make.

What Are Key Partnerships?

A business partnership is when companies (commercial entities) form an alliance, which is either exclusive or loose. Loose relationships mean that both parties can still partner with further entities, whilst exclusivity limits to either company to that that one relationship.

Most partnership relationships are for the simple reason that most businesses want to have a spread of other businesses to reduce risk and provide opportunities for growth.

When considering a partnership there are several factors that need to be considered.

1. Link to Value Proposition.
2. Selection criteria.
3. Partnership agreements.
4. Defining terms and service levels.
5. Development of a win-win relationship.

1. Value Proposition and Key Partnerships

The key partnerships building block refers to the commercial companies that help to deliver the overall value proposition. These companies can supply needed infrastructure, services, materials, parts, products and so on. They are instrumental in helping you develop your overall business model.

One way of viewing partners is they can be outsourced suppliers of key activities and resources that you need but are not core to your business.

Another factor for consideration is fluctuations in demand. As an example, if you are in the business of producing events you might hire sound equipment rather than purchase it.

The reason for this is that you have a fluctuating demand for it and there are plenty of suppliers.

Key partnerships provide a huge variety of ways to create value and it is often a combination of partners that makes an organization unique.

2. Selection Criteria

The goal when choosing partners is to optimize value. Traditionally, the focus has been to drive down costs by sourcing more flexible solutions from partners for activities that are non-core.

However, quality and not price are a key factor when deciding which partner – your brand and business can be severely damaged if a poorly chosen supplier doesn’t provide consistent service levels or products to the quality you need.

Selection criteria help you to create a checklist in simple terms of the most important factors for selection. There are hard and soft factors. Hard factors are the specifications of the service or products.

However, often an overlooked but equally important factor is the soft factors.

Soft factors are related to how well two businesses can work together. Some of the soft factors for partner relationships are:

• the similarity of the cultures.
• vision and values of the two companies.
• ambitions and attitudes.

In a nutshell, if the people are at polar opposites of culture and values then the partnership is more than likely to be bumpy or even fail.

3. Partnership Agreements

Both parties need to agree to different factors that have operational, intellectual and financial implications. The first stage is to define the elements of the partnerships and then define how they will affect each partner.

Of course, as discussions progress and the details are clarified, legal conditions have to be considered and agreed upon as well.

4. Defining Terms and Service Levels

Terms set out intentions in a clearly and concisely. The terms of an agreement comprise of financial, legal, operational and administrative aspects. In addition, there needs to be a summary fo the interactions and exchanges.

This enables all parties to focus on the important matters without having to go through the exhaustive details within the overall document. Service levels are the minimum delivery level required.

As an example, a web hosting service might commit to 99.5% uptime.

5. Developing A Win-Win Partnership

There are always areas for negotiation especially for high-value contracts involving complex services. However, if when entering negotiations you aim to not compromise or work towards some common ground then you are entering a win-lose agreement. Whilst, you might feel as though you have won, often suppliers then look to cut corners to make up for difficult to meet agreement conditions and margins.

A much better way of operating is to aim for win-win agreements.

Business Model Key Partnerships

Key Partnerships building block of the Business Model Canvas

Some considerations for choosing a partner are:

1. Optimization – efficiencies and scale.
2. Reduction of risk and uncertainty.
3. Outsourced activities and resources.

1. Optimization

For these types of partnerships, the goal is to identify and partner with companies that provide low-cost solutions because of their scale. As an example, many companies including Spotify use Google Cloud. Soem of the reasons for this are:

• cheaper than buying, running and owning web servers.
• Google Cloud can easily scale as a business grows.
• Google Cloud infrastructure is global.

2. Reduction of Risk and Uncertainty

By jointly working together partners can reduce investment risks and uncertainty. Often this is the case with highly technical research and development programmes.

3. Outsourced Activities and Resources

When areas of expertise can be sourced through partner companies it is often more beneficial to outsource to them rather than hiring teams of people. This leaves a company able to focus on its core activities that fit to the value proposition.

Types of Key Partnerships

There are different types of partnership that could be useful to your business, such as:

• Buyer-Supplier partnership: This is the most common form and it could help you to have a reliable and systematic source of supplies for your business.
• Co-opetition: Partnering with another company producing the same thing to gain more market share, reduce risks and create synergies.
• Strategic Alliance: this kind of partnership is formed between non-competitors.
• Joint Venture: Partnering with a complementary company to produce a new product.

Key Questions

• What if we found a partner who could manufacture core resources for cheaper than we can do it ourselves?
• Who else could stock our products?
• What other services could benefit from integrating what we do?
• How can we use our spare capacity to solve problems for other companies?
• Whose brand could we leverage to build our credibility?
• What services will other businesses require in the future that don’t exist today?

Examples of Partnerships

• Volvo partners with Harmon Kardon for the sound systems in their cars.
• Apple partners with Cisco.

Red Bull and GoPro. GoPro sells more than portable cameras, while Red Bull sells more than energy drinks. They are both lifestyle brands that have similar goals. This illustrates how they both overlap in terms of audience and brand. They have the following in common:

• Fearless
• Adventurous
• Extreme
• Action-packed

Spotify partnered with Uber because they both had the same goal of getting more users even though they had different products. Uber riders can pick out a Spotify playlist to choose what they’ll listen to during their ride. This helps both Spotify and Uber fans have a better experience during their ride in the car.

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