Trading services can be a great resource regardless of the economy. I have seen trade work out really well and I have seen trade work poorly. So how can you use the trading of services effectively?
Trade is used when you have a specific need and are short on cash to make it happen. The first thing to do is to identify who can use the services that you provide and how can you package them attractively to a potential trade partner. The best advice I can give is to think it out. We will talk more on this in a minute. Make sure that the businesses you approach for trade can get benefit from your service. It seems like this shouldn’t even need to be mentioned but I have seen plenty of times where businesses just seem to want to take advantage of a situation rather than provide real value.
Once you know the type of business and how you can help them with your product/service. Start getting out and finding companies that are a fit. Social media is a great resource for that. Tools such as Twitter can be really speed up your process by just asking a simple question of your Twitter follwers. “Do you know of a company that does “X” who would willing to trade for “Y”? Start asking business contacts on other platforms as well such as LinkedIn or Facebook. The other tip I can give here is to keep your eye out for the partnership. You never know when or where it’s going to come from.
Now that you have a trade partner, it’s important to set detailed parameters of the relationship. By all means get this down on paper as well. There’s nothing that ruins a relationship faster than a lack of clarity on both sides. Be very specific about what each will offer and by when.
When you are working together you may come to the realization that what you thought would be a fair exchange in fact was lopsided. If this goes against you, the best advice I can give is to chalk it as a lesson learned and continue to hold your end of the bargain. Don’t get mad about it and try and renege on your agreement. You agreed upfront so honor your word. That doesn’t mean you can give feedback when the project is complete about what your concerns are for future reference. If you have never done trade before just expect that things wont work out perfectly at first.
The last thing is to make sure that you are keeping track of how things are going and learn from it. If some things didn’t work out, ask yourself why. Ask how you could have structured the realtionship better or been more clear. Make sure you learn from the experience and that you are able to make the next trade relationship even more productive the next time.
How have you used trade in the past? What has been your experience and would you do it again?
I have used trade many times and I always felt that I was receiving more value than what I was giving. In truth, the other party always felt the same way. Expectations were always very clearly communicated on each end and although we (me and the other party) were extremely happy with what we each received, we continually tried to “out do” ourselves by one-upping the other. This has fortunately been in every transaction from property to services received. I believe that in my case, I didn’t give myself enough credit in my own value creation. What I had to offer came so naturally to me, that it didn’t seem to be that big of a deal. Not a big enough deal to trade anyway. It is still something I struggle with and oftentimes end up trying to give more away than I probably should. I have no regrets in any trade I’ve done however, how do I clearly determine what the value is of what I have to offer?