When you run your own business, it can often feel like it’s you against the world. But even in the cutthroat world of business, you have to find people that you can trust and can work with. And in many cases, the more closely you’re able to work with these associates, the more success both of your businesses will find. The trick here is knowing who to partner with.

To help you in figuring this out, here are three things to consider before partnering with a new business.

Choose Someone Complementary To You

While there are some business partnerships that you create in order for your business to operate, like the vendors for your products or the companies that sell you things like commercial pump solutions, there are other partnerships that you can make that are more strategic. So when you’re choosing these partnerships, you’re going to want to make sure you find someone that’s complementary to you and your business.

If you’re going to work with another business, there should be a purpose for this partnership. For example, if both of your businesses are looking to break into new markets that the other business already has a foothold in, working together could be mutually beneficial. Additionally, if you’re very strong in one aspect of business that this other business is weak in, you can work together to strengthen both businesses without coming in direct competition with one another.

Make Sure Your Values Align

For many business owners, there are strict and specific values that they want their business to adhere to. So if this is something that you’re passionate about, you’re going to want to make sure that any business that you partner with has similar values as you.

Not only can working with a business with different values be challenging with it comes to working together, but if your customers or clients know that you preach a certain thing but are willing to work with other businesses that don’t have these same values, it can be bad for your reputation to work with these kinds of organizations.

Discuss How To Handle Conflict

In all relationships, including business partnerships, there’s bound to be a time where conflict arises. Knowing this, as you begin your business partnership, you’ll want to discuss what you’ll do when conflict arises and how you’ll handle various types of disagreements.

As a good place to start, both sides should commit to always being respectful when speaking with one another and going through a process for figuring out what to do and how to handle a difficult situation. You may also want to state that each business will ultimately have the final say for how things are done for their company if opinions are at odds.

If you want to partner with another business, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you know how to best go about this in a successful way.