This month I’ve been coordinating a series of new Joint Ventures. Time and again I’m finding how amazingly easy it can be when I just start out by asking what the other person wants.

When you’re first meeting with somebody you’ll obviously have to explain what you want… what you do… and why on earth you’re talking to them out of nowhere.

But after you’ve laid some groundwork and stated your own purposes, make sure to ask about THEM as quickly as possible. What are their goals and aspirations? Is their company moving in a new direction that you can help them out with?

As an Internet Marketer, I’ve found that when I speak with Offline businesses, they just want to leverage the Internet without getting burned. This is a prime spot to be doing a Joint Venture.

Leverage the skills, client list and other resources of an Offline business by bartering your own services. For many of my peers, that would be giving sound Marketing advice… or a more formal trade of referrals and cross-promotion of one another’s services.

My latest example comes from last Thursday when I sat down and talked with a new JV partner. He runs an Offline business that services most of Florida, and it took me several phone calls and brief face-to-face meetings to get to this point… but I knew it would be worth it.

After a solid hour of discussion we laid out exactly what the other is looking for, and what he told me was FAR outside of what I thought he wanted.

If I hadn’t been open to discussing what HE wanted, the deal wouldn’t have happened… or it would have felt sour because we weren’t meeting each other’s needs.

Bottom-line: Don’t be entirely self-centered when looking for JV partners. Make each and every relationship a win-win. And don’t confine yourself to only paying referral commissions because many people aren’t looking for hard cash as much as a good barter of services (which will probably be cheaper for you in the long run).