When should you write an alliance contract? Best practice puts alliance design ahead of structuring a contract. Many teams jump into contract way too early. It is important to have a pretty good picture of the business case for the alliance, the operating model, buy-in from stakeholders and value propositions, etc before you start formalizing [...]
When we talk about digital transformation, so much about it is about the customer experience. At a recent ASAP Tech Partner Forum, Tiffani Bova from Salesforce cited an example of how as a consumer, you might order a Starbucks, from your Tesla, through Alexa. When you drive up to pick up your coffee, it has [...]
Recently I was invited to facilitate a roundtable/workshop at the June 7, 2017 ASAP Tech Partner Forum in Santa Clara, Calif., centered on digital transformation. We heard from many experts and pioneers in the technology space about the challenges and changes they were navigating. It was like drinking from a firehose. The workshop on “Managing [...]
A View from the Trenches IoT (Internet of Things) has been and continues to be predicted as one of the most compelling factors for driving digital transformation spanning business to business, business to consumer, and government (federal, state, and local). Gartner Inc., the technology research firm says "8.4 Billion "Things" will be in use in [...]
The key to a winning baseball season is not the amount of money spent on star talent. If that were the case then Billy Beane, the central figure of Michael Lewis’ best selling book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game”, would never have led the Oakland Athletics to the playoffs in spite of the [...]
How do you engage when your partner is strategic to you – but you are not strategic to them. My partner thinks of me as a supplier, or a channel, or 'fill-in-the-blank.' How do I become a strategic partner? This is a common refrain from startups and small companies wanting a relationship with a big [...]
Measuring Channel Ecosystem Health? And Why do I Care? I recall the first time I spoke about a “partner ecosystem” in 1999 to my boss, a long time direct sales manager. He looked at me like I was a tree hugger. Today, we frequently talk about our partners collectively as an ecosystem; yet there are [...]
Understanding if you have the right number of channel partners can be a tricky question and one related to having the right partners. You may have thousands of partners but they may not be productive for you or they may not have the right skills. But assuming they are the right partners with the rights skills,there is still a possibility [...]
You’ve recruited partners and now you need to get them ready to sell your products and solutions. Systematic and deliberate onboarding can have long term impact on partner loyalty and productivity. By one company's experience, 50% greater first year revenue was realized by those partners onboarded through a carefully planned partner experience vs those left to [...]
“Well, they get a good margin” was the response to the question “What is the partner value proposition?” at one large manufacturer. Margin as defined between the difference between buy price and sell price is probably not the right answer. “Do I offer my partner a profitable business proposition?” is a better question. The right answer [...]