By Diane Krakora, CEO
As a company focused on perfecting partnering between organizations, we’ve been reflecting on our recent partnership with Averetek. In a new partnership, sometimes everything falls into place quickly and other times you must be diligent with checklists, meetings and emails to get everything in order. In fact, we believe there are six key steps to launching a lasting partnership. We've made smooth, steady progress in our new venture with Averetek, and here's a self-check in the mirror to see how it's going.
What We’ve Nailed So Far
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We clearly defined our value proposition. Part of that was easy. We offer a PRM solution based on channel best practices and Averetek offers a leading channel marketing platform. But, we took the time to think about the questions: “What is in it for our customers?” and, “Are we really a better option together?”
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We discussed the big-picture vision and ensured cultural alignment. We held several face-to-face meetings to discuss these topics and to secure executive commitment. The conversations and ideas shared in these meetings made it clear that this partnership could produce real value. For example, we realized we both have a philosophy of offering deep, rich content to our prospects and that through teaching, we earn the right to sell to them.
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Our product teams worked together to develop our joint solution. From SSO to data integration and even matching the layout and look and feel, this was an important milestone to ensuring we were actually better together and not just a sell-with proposition.
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We clearly communicated our value proposition to clients and prospects. We held back our partnership press release until we had executive alignment and a product fit. We’re not making any Barney relationships here.
What We Have Left to Do
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We are working on co-marketing activities. We have done some co-marketing together – each participating in the others’ round table events and cross pollinating on webinars. However, we have more to do in our cross marketing activities. We have content to share on each other’s sites, white papers to pen, datasheets to put together and demos to record. There’s a lot on the list to accelerate this partnership, but we’re getting through it incrementally.
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We need to get our sales efforts working together. We always tell our customers this is the tough part – where the rubber meets the road. Getting the sales teams to know the story, understand the value proposition and be motivated (i.e. compensated) to pitch the joint solution is not easy for any partnership, be that resale, referral, product, distribution. When partnerships are real and beneficial, the sales efforts will materialize and that happens best when done organically.
As with many partnerships, the intention and commitment is there on both sides to complete these partnership launch activities. We’re both willing, but both sides also have businesses to run – customers call, events happen, and critical research seems to materialize with a due date of yesterday. We know it’s hard to keep your eye on these initiatives – we tell our customers that every day and we’re no exception.
The trick is to keep pushing forward. How do you nurture your new partnership and keep it moving ahead? In our case, we’re holding a weekly cross-functional, cross-company team meeting focused on addressing the question, “How do we continue to accelerate our traction together?”
Partnerships are critical to continued growth but, just like any other relationship, they take time and attention. How are you doing in your partnerships? What do you think about our partnership with Averetek? Any advice to pass along? Let us know how we’re doing. We’ll be calling you!
