Partnering Strategy
What does this mean for your business? It means revenue!
What does this mean for your business? It means revenue!
As companies focus on differentiation and delivering unique value to their customers, partnering has developed into a critical component for success in today's business environment. Whether you're creating new distribution channels or establishing joint development relationships, partnerships can help you build sales revenue and profits in areas you could not target by yourself.
Working with other organizations allows you to provide a more complete solution for your customers. A more complete solution means more added values. More added value means increased revenue and profits.
So what does this mean for your business? It means revenue. Revenue that you would not have otherwise had, had you not developed a clear channel strategy. So where do you start?
Partner Acquisition Program
Our Partner Acquisition Program is customized to your specific needs and desires. Here's how we do it:
1) Target your markets
Which customer segments can most benefit from your products or services delivered in conjunction with a strong partner?
2) Define your company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
Development partnerships evolved as a result of the joint selling process. When partner companies would release new products, often the hardware was incompatible with the software, or vice versa. That meant both companies had to share their proprietary technology and development plans in order for the product to work together. What strengths can you offer a partner company? What weaknesses in your own product or service offerings need shoring up?
3) Target your partners
Build a profile of the ideal partner by identifying the ideal business and structure within which you want to work. What criteria are most important in a successful partner? Financial stability, technical expertise, ethics, business drivers? What business goals do you share? Most importantly, what pain are you solving for you and your partner?
4) Build a list of potential partner targets
Remember, this is a strategic process. Match partners to your list of criteria, then determine whom the best person is to contact. Don't just have a salesperson call and develop the profile. Conduct some preliminary market research, which will help you find the information you need to go after the right partners. The last thing you want is to get 6 months into a partnership only to find that the other company doesn't have the right mix of market insight and technology expertise to win new customers.
5) Implement a Campaign
At this point begin implementing the campaign. If applicable, this portion of the program will include a partnering publicity campaign for the purpose of attracting qualified prospects. Do case-by-case assessments of specific prospective partners and partnering including both strategic and tactical analysis of the likely risks and benefits.
6) Negotiate and close the Partnering Master Agreement
We provide you experienced guidance in negotiating and closing formal specific partnering relationships including guidance on key partnering practices and preparing your first deal sheet. Each of these is specially tailored to your company and the partnering needs.
All partnerships should have a process for regular reviews, where progress can be assessed against a series of jointly agreed objectives. There should be a defined way of dealing with those that are falling short of their targets, with procedures for setting actions to get the relationship back on course.
And there should be clearly defined mechanisms for formally ending a partnership. In the case where a partnership has failed through no fault of either party – for example, where the market has changed, or a key customer has defected, or a major project has been cancelled – it is important that the reasons for failure are agreed and documented.
" This may sound like hard work, but the chances are you'll find you need to concentrate on just a few partnerships to make a big difference to the results you are achieving."
Working with other organizations allows you to provide a more complete solution for your customers. A more complete solution means more added values. More added value means increased revenue and profits.
So what does this mean for your business? It means revenue. Revenue that you would not have otherwise had, had you not developed a clear channel strategy. So where do you start?
Partner Acquisition Program
Our Partner Acquisition Program is customized to your specific needs and desires. Here's how we do it:
1) Target your markets
Which customer segments can most benefit from your products or services delivered in conjunction with a strong partner?
2) Define your company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
Development partnerships evolved as a result of the joint selling process. When partner companies would release new products, often the hardware was incompatible with the software, or vice versa. That meant both companies had to share their proprietary technology and development plans in order for the product to work together. What strengths can you offer a partner company? What weaknesses in your own product or service offerings need shoring up?
3) Target your partners
Build a profile of the ideal partner by identifying the ideal business and structure within which you want to work. What criteria are most important in a successful partner? Financial stability, technical expertise, ethics, business drivers? What business goals do you share? Most importantly, what pain are you solving for you and your partner?
4) Build a list of potential partner targets
Remember, this is a strategic process. Match partners to your list of criteria, then determine whom the best person is to contact. Don't just have a salesperson call and develop the profile. Conduct some preliminary market research, which will help you find the information you need to go after the right partners. The last thing you want is to get 6 months into a partnership only to find that the other company doesn't have the right mix of market insight and technology expertise to win new customers.
5) Implement a Campaign
At this point begin implementing the campaign. If applicable, this portion of the program will include a partnering publicity campaign for the purpose of attracting qualified prospects. Do case-by-case assessments of specific prospective partners and partnering including both strategic and tactical analysis of the likely risks and benefits.
6) Negotiate and close the Partnering Master Agreement
We provide you experienced guidance in negotiating and closing formal specific partnering relationships including guidance on key partnering practices and preparing your first deal sheet. Each of these is specially tailored to your company and the partnering needs.
All partnerships should have a process for regular reviews, where progress can be assessed against a series of jointly agreed objectives. There should be a defined way of dealing with those that are falling short of their targets, with procedures for setting actions to get the relationship back on course.
And there should be clearly defined mechanisms for formally ending a partnership. In the case where a partnership has failed through no fault of either party – for example, where the market has changed, or a key customer has defected, or a major project has been cancelled – it is important that the reasons for failure are agreed and documented.
" This may sound like hard work, but the chances are you'll find you need to concentrate on just a few partnerships to make a big difference to the results you are achieving."