Articles About Better Partnering
Changing the Channel in the Age of Saas and SMAC
Channels are under pressure as never before. They have been subject to compressing product margins over the years; first on hardware, then software and now - pressure from a business model perspective in adjusting from transactional payment to recurring revenue driven by the SaaS (software as a service). Forward thinking resellers have been migrating their business model over the years [...]
Embedding Partnering Best Practices
One of the challenges of professional development is retaining the knowledge and incorporating the new learning into the day to day business practice. Most of us intuitively understand the limitations of classroom training. While most well-crafted training includes discussion and practice exercises, it is through immediate use that learning is best retained and the business results are realized. Reinforcement and motivation to change are critical [...]
Do You Have a Culture for Collaboration?
Every organization has a unique culture as a result of the norms, values and accepted behaviors that are held within the community. People are often unaware that they do function within a company culture. However, when they begin to work closely with another company culture, they become aware of those differences because of the disconnects those differences can cause. [...]
The Soft Stuff is the Hard Stuff
Collaborative competencies are a distinct set of skills that effective alliance professionals have in applying the processes and practices described in the previous blog but collaborative competencies also include many ‘soft skills’. The softskills are ironically the most difficult ones, often gained through on-the-job-training and years of experience. These include being able to assemble virtual, cross functional teams, leading [...]
Alliance Lifecycle – Framework for Success
Alliance management is in many ways a young profession, yet there is a set of defined processes and practices that have been shown to be effective in creating and operating successful collaborations. Research has shown that companies that approach collaboration through ad hoc practices rarely succeed and those that apply a disciplined approach can consistently realize over 80% success rates. Most successful alliance companies [...]
The Role of the Executive Champion
Success Begins at the Top It is hard to overstate the importance of a champion at the senior levels of the organization. Many alliances fail or falter when they lose the executive champion and the role is not back filled with a strong leader. The role of the champion is many fold. They represent the alliance issues and needs [...]
The Secret Sauce of Successful Collaboration
Partnering and building alliances is the preferred model of business growth for many CEO’s. Collaboration has a multiplier effect; it leverages the expertise, resources, and talent beyond the walls of a single organization. “Collaboration is the number-one trait CEOs are seeking in their employees, with 75 percent of CEOs calling it critical” in IBM’s most recent study surveying 1700 [...]
The Accidental Alliance Manager
No one graduates from school with a degree in Alliance Management and most of us have found ourselves in the profession quite by accident. I’ve asked people how they have come into the profession and there is quite a spectrum. Many come from technical or scientific disciplines when products are created through a collaboration of different companies. Some come [...]
Ten Tips to Advance Your Career
“Collaboration is the number-one trait CEOs are seeking in their employees, with 75 percent of CEOs calling it critical” in IBM’s most recent 2012 study surveying 1700 CEO’s. But this skill is in short supply. Collaboration has fallen into the skills gap. It should be a time ripe for opportunity for partner managers as experienced collaboration managers. How can you as [...]
Surviving Contact with the Partner
General Colin Powel was quoted “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. Well, in our experience no plan survives contact with the partner either, nor should it! We’ve conducted and attended many partner planning exercises that did not include the partner. Not surprisingly when our Magnum Opus was presented to the partner, it didn’t resonate or at the very least didn’t [...]
Getting your Alliance Team to Sing from the Same Page?
Do you use Team Charters to kick off your alliance or new alliance initiative? What is a team charter? It is the Cliff notes of what is important for your alliance. It summarizes the vision, key objectives, and value proposition(s). A charter defines and documents the measures by which you judge success. It establishes the values and operating principles [...]
Making Training Relevant
Providing training to your partners is a major component of partner enablement. However one size does not fit all. Training must be relevant to your partners’ needs, delivered when they need it and in a format they find consumable. The challenge becomes exponential when you consider the number of engagement models, multiple products or services, and the different professional [...]
Volume vs Value? How are you Investing in Partner Success?
Training, Certification and Specialization How do these investments pay-off? Is volume or value more important in developing your partner strategy? Do you reward and recommend partners based on the volume of goods and services they sell? Or do you recognize those that provide the most value to your customers? Is having more partners extending your footprint and brand more [...]
Partner Engagement – How to Capture Interest and Motivate your Partners?
Most channel programs see the 80/20 rule in effect around partner engagement. Meaning, only 20% of your partners are actively selling and promoting your products and services. So how do you increase active selling? Recruit more partners? Or find a way to capture more interest with the partners you already have? Capturing interest and motivating partners to engage is a [...]
Ten Best Practices for Better Joint Business Planning
We recently led an alliance team through an alliance business planning session. Through that process we captured a number of best practices that lead to better business planning and ultimately better performing alliances. Here is what we learned: Develop the business plan with your partner. Successful alliances are win/win/win . Your partners’ strategic objectives, resources, commitment and creative insight [...]
What Makes a Stellar Partner Program?
CRN recently released their annual partner program review which grades partner programs based upon a number of criteria including vendor investments in program offerings, partner profitability, partner training, education and support, marketing programs and resources, sales support and communication. We would like to extend our congratulations to all those vendors who achieved the acclaimed 5-star rating! A lot of thought [...]
Partner Performance – Measuring Program Effectiveness
We often focus on how to measure the performance of individual partners, but it is equally important to understand how your partner community is performing. Insight into what drives performance across your community informs you on how to better manage your partner program to enable more success. There are a number of ways to look at program metrics: Business [...]
Driving Partner Sales through Incentives
Following our last Deal Registration blog post, many readers have been wanting to know more about how to incent partners to register a deal and examples of how "best in class" incentive programs work. Simply put, the purpose of incentives is to influence the behavior you want from your partners through rewards. The issue lies in which partners should [...]