The more a corporate-barter firm is focused on barter, the more options it can provide.

Make sure you are comfortable with the company you keep; you'll be together for a long time. To help, take the time to partner with one that:

• Reinvests profits in the firm, enhancing its financial strength and spurring new products (vs. distributing all the money to its owners).
• Concentrates on product development, employing creative resources to anticipate and develop what its clients will need in the future.
• Is an industry thought leader. Is it a firm that companies turn to when they have to solve a knotty problem or just a routine player?
• Has senior executives who are hands-on dealmakers. A corporate-barter transaction requires major commitments on both sides. Get the firm's commitments from the top.
• Does business in the United States. The U.S. is home to the world's largest and most diverse marketplaces of perishable commodities. Firms that try to offer American-style corporate barterThe creation of value by exchanging a client's unwanted or undervalued asset for the promise to purchase over a period of time from the corporate-barter company a defined set of goods and/or services, called fulfillment. (Sometimes mistakenly referred to as Corporate Trade.) based in Europe, South America or Asia are likely to have trouble amassing enough inventoryWhile this can refer to a client's physical inventory of merchandise (which, if it represents an undervalued asset, could form the basis of a corporate barter transaction), in the corporate barter world, inventory more commonly refers to a supply of advertising time/space purchased in advance by the barter company, which client companies use as fulfillment to complete their side of a corporate barter agreement. to fund transactions of any significant scale.
• Is operationally independent from its owner. If the barter firm has to rely on another division within its family of companies for cashU.S. federal banknotes; one of ICON's financial options., media planning, buying or other key functions, that division is understandably likely to put its clients and loyalties first.

Choosing the right corporate-barter firm is an important long-term commitment.