So ZBIN started the buzz around partnerships encouraging our members to partner for business success. Encouraging partnerships between locals and locals partnering with Diasporans etc. Now this is a risky area, extremely risky and this is why we are moving at a snail pace making sure that all the necessary mechanisms are in place before we fully launch a pilot partnership scheme. The last thing we would like to witness is someone who would have poured in funds into dubious or non-existent projects.
Its hard to trust anyone these days and this is especially true where money is concerned! Bring money onto the table and all hidden characters of people will crop up-you can never fully know a person until you give them money or worse-trust them with money! This is why in our scheme, you have to be bonafide, be cleared by the Police, have a registered company that complies with all local laws and regulations.
Your business will be verified,checking corporate governance,viability etc. You have to prove that you have handled funds before, you have applied for bank loans and successfully serviced them-there should be evidence. There should be reference checks from banks,suppliers,employees and customers. Not an easy process as most small businesses are run on a kiya kiya basis-so we expect to have fewer than 30 small companies to be certified fit for partnerships for the initial launch. We will cover the success or failure of these partnerships objectively.
A free service, the identity of investors maybe protected but companies that qualify for our facility will be made public on our site so that members of the public will be free to give feedback. So if you would like to participate then preparation is key….get your papers in order and we will contact you in June 2017. The hope is that we will celebrate success of this initiative by June 2018-we would like to see results, positive results…we would like to showcase success stories on this forum. Success stories that will help inspire more investment into the country and the region.
Bad Partnership Story
This one is a bitter one for the forum and this is why we keep talking about it and giving it as a reference. In March 2017, we engaged a website developer to develop our poultry site. The website address of the site was www.zbinchickens.co.zw. We paid the website developer a deposit of $200, he had shown us a lot of successful projects where he had designed some good websites. He did a wonderful job which resulted in one of the best poultry websites on earth. We paid him the remainder of the outstanding balance of $200 and serious work began on the site where we uploaded a lot of material. In mind we had an objective to have once central place/central market place/central resource centre/central price monitoring/central online store for poultry. So what happened a few months after the set up of the site? One day we woke up and found the site gone! Kudomhanya kuti ko site yaenda kuti-kuti pano nepano the results were the same –our site had vanished!
We tried to contact him but he could not be located. So who lost in this business deal? ZBIN obviously lost because all of our material disappeared, all the hard work and researches went to waste.
The biggest loser
The biggest loser in the deal is definitely him! We published the story of being conned widely forcing him to go underground! No one from the ZBIN community wanted to deal with him…he lost more than the $400 that he took from us. We are not sure why he pulled down an innocuous site whose sole purpose was to support farmers with resources and markets for free.
The Biggest Winner
The biggest winner is probably the new guys we engaged to improve this site. We did not pay them a single penny but allowed them to advertise on our site. Allowed them to use our site as a reference point. We have been getting a lot of inquiries from our members and followers who would like to have sites developed for them. I have so far referred 10 people who are interested in setting up business sites. I hope to have referred to him more than 40 prospective clients by the end of year-what a smart way to obtain new clients.
Dear reader, this is a definition of a smart partnership where both parties emerge winners at the end of the deal. ZBIN should have paid $400-$800 for the redesign of this site but paid nothing and what is the good news for the developer? The developer is going to get business worth more than 10 times what he was supposed to charge us. ZBIN will keep on talking about the good story of what he did and referring more clients to him….as for the guy who destroyed our site the message is clear, we will not refer anyone to him.
So master the art of smart partnerships, smart partnerships do not bring fast results, they do not bring quick monies but do so in the long run and opens a lot of opportunity doors.
So zvave kwamuri kufuka kana kuwarira, to go for the fast route where you con people and get fast SKT money but being blacklisted or to be ethical and benefit for a very long time.
SKT WEBDESIGN
For website designs do email sktwebsitedesign@gmail.com or phone +263772 922 265
