Strategic Partnership Enablement

Strategic Partnership Enablement

One of the more difficult business challenges that larger, mid-sized, and startup companies face is the enablement of strategic partnerships to accelerate the development and feature breathe of their solutions, as well as to dramatically expand the sales coverage for their solutions into new and existing markets.

At Let’s Transition, we can start off by working together to access the need for a strategic partnership, as well as identify which benefits you can expect to achieve by doing so.

Some of those benefits include:

cost reductions in staff and solution development
increased brand recognition and credibility
improved competitive positioning in the market

Working together, we can help ensure success by quickly establishing the necessary transparency and trust, as well as ensure that there are significant benefits for all parties involved in the partnership. Establishing trust is the most difficult task and will require focus and nurturing to establish. We are masters at this and will help make sure your organization clearly understands how best to establish this important element in your new strategic relationship, especially at the beginning.

Partner Identification

To get started, we’ll take a close look at the customers you currently serve and then decide if the solutions you are offering meet their current and future needs. In addition, we will identify if there are additional customers and markets that can benefit from your solutions, as well as your solutions with some additional features and capabilities.

We’ll start to look into what it will take to expand into these new markets, as well as identify how to get you there. If the decision is to enable a new strategic partnership, we will work through on the following to ensure we identify and enable the best partner for success:

What is the list of companies where working together will achieve the most overall success for your solutions, both in your existing markets of focus as well as the new markets we have identified?
What direct benefit will you be offering the targeted company by working with them? How will these benefits significantly benefit the partner’s portfolio, and will it be enough for them to stay focused once our newly formed partnership once it has been established?
Together, we will identify the realistic goals and expectations and share them openly as we establish the initial levels of transparency and trust to get the partnership started.

There will be some difficult items to take into account as well. Working together with all of your key management team members, we can ensure we address all of the following upfront at the beginning of the partnership to help avoid painful and time-consuming conflicts later on. These complicated items include:

These complicated items include:

Newly created intellectual property – joint ownership
Trade secrets

Partner Onboarding

Onboarding new partners can be very challenging and time consuming for your entire organization. Working together, we will ensure that all parties involved are properly aligned by ensuring they understand the significance of the new strategic relationship, as well as what their expected contribution will be to help ensure it is successful.

There will be a significant amount of communication required with the new strategic partnership. We will ensure the messaging is consistent from your organization, that all commitments are carefully managed, and all deliverables are timely and exceed expectations. This will include a significant amount of patience and repetition, especially at the beginning, as everyone is getting to know each other.

Together, we will clearly define what needs to be done to make the partnership successful, as well as define stakeholders who will be responsible for each focus area. In addition, we will determine what it will take, as well as create a plan, to make the partner self-sufficient representing your products and solutions, especially if they do not have the current knowledge or expertise to do so.

Clear Communication Channels and an Agreed-upon Cadence for Updates

At the core of all successful partnerships is the need for clearly defined and enabled communication channels between all parties involved. Together, we will identify who within the organization will be part of the regular communication meetings that will be scheduled, what the frequency of the meetings will be, pre-defined and agreed-upon agendas for each meeting, and most importantly, who will be responsible for recording and ensuring all identified action items are completed and closed within the agreed-upon timeframe.

Complex Business Categories to Be Addressed

When enabling a partner’s sales teams to sell, your solutions can be a very complex challenge to tackle. There are a number of important items that need to be addressed to ensure the maximum success with the strategic partnership.

Knowledge Transfer and Education

It is imperative that the partner clearly understand your product, the value and benefit it brings to their customer, and most importantly, how will it affect their current sales cycle. We can work closely with your product management and sales leads to ensure this is done quickly and accurately.

We will also establish a clear communication channel, including an escalation process, for the sales team when challenges arise that they do not know how to resolve on their own.

Compensation, Forecasting, and Incentives

We can never lose sight that the sales team is most interested in retiring quota in the most efficient way to get compensated. With this in mind, we will make sure that the addition of your solutions will not negatively affect the sales teams selling efficiency.

Compensation, especially of a partner’s sales team, is normally a very difficult discussion to have. Working together, we will:

Be open and transparent with our thoughts on how best to compensate the partner’s sales teams.
Share our thoughts and willingness to offer sales incentives for the closure of business.
Agree upon the time frame, agenda, and cadence for regular business review meetings, typically held quarterly, where all of the key stakeholders from within the strategic partnership are present.

Quick Contact

Making This Happen

We at Let’s Transition have more than 25 years of experience successfully identifying, enabling, and managing successful strategic partnerships. Let’s schedule a time and determine how we can best help you.