Small businesses have been unusually hard-hit in these uncertain times. The dynamics of the partner ecosystem is that most of the partners are small business and they serve small businesses. Being a small business myself, I know how precarious cash flow can be. Many of these businesses are seeing their revenues shut down as their [...]
Building a partner ecosystem is hard. But what's harder than building an ecosystem? Building a culture that supports an ecosystem strategy. I spoke with one executive who was responsible for building the partner ecosystem at a well-known payroll processor, and our discussion perfectly illustrated this challenge. The executive's decades-old company was expanding beyond payroll processing [...]
In early 2018, my colleague Laura Powers, an Agilest Icon, and I held a workshop on Agile Partnering. One of our attendees was Kristina Scott, Sr. Director Partner Enablement, Marketing, Operations at Seclore. Seclore is an emerging security software startup with a broad ecosystem of channels, technology alliances and OEMs. A year after the workshop, [...]
or How to Build to Build Partner Ecosystems for Agility, Innovation and Growth in Your Business as published in Forbes.com. As someone who has been architecting and managing business partner ecosystems for more than 30 years in the tech industry, I am quite interested in the attention ecosystems have been receiving from management pundits of [...]
Partnerships are about creating new value that could not be easily achieved alone. So the focus of negotiations should pivot on partner math 1 + 1 > 3. Your first discovery conversation with a potential partner is usually about how you create more value together. Then, how do you each realize value in the partnership. [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
Certification assures Collaborative Capability: Taking Partnering to the Next Level I was fortunate to be featured in an interview for the Marketing Thought Leadership series with Linda Popky, Marketing Master and recently named one of Silicon Valley's Top 100 Women of Influence. In this podcast interview, I was asked to speak about the growing recognition [...]
Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting GroupWe asked twenty partner managers What is social media? By far the most common response was Good Question! After a thoughtful pause, we heard social media were tools that enabled users to communicate, to build loyalty, to collaborate and to listen. Its an opportunity to have communities [...]
In the Eight Secrets webcast, we reviewed some research data indicating that higher performing companies were extensive collaborators. Here I'd like to share some thoughts behind a fundamental change in attitude towards collaboration and partnering that I've seen in past few years. Some years ago, companies would express their reason for partnering in terms of [...]