A partnership of equals

In my conversations with smaller product companies the issue of finding partners or building a channel often comes up. There are several excellent reasons to tie up for eg.:

1. Increase your reach - more sales "feet on the street" & on-site customer support

2. Access to the partner's existing customer base

3. Ease of payments & certain financial transactions

4. More predictablity in sales

5. Helping give a fillip to Q end or Y end nos.

It should come as no surprise, however, that signing a partnership with great fan fare is not a guarantee to success. Partnerships often kick-off with a few opportunities that crop up because of the initial combined market outreach efforts but in a depressingly large number of cases the partner then seems to lose interest over time & ends up becoming just another name & contract gathering dust in the partner file. Sound familiar ?

My thoery is that we often approach a prospective partner based on our assessment of what the partnership can do for us but we sometimes neglect the flip side of that story - what's in it for them ? The single biggest reason a partner signs up for is to make money. Leaving aside "exclusive" arrangements in most cases when you consider the amount of sales that can be expected from a single specific partner from a single specific region the problem becomes apparent. The partner very quickly cottons on to the fact that with the smaller companies while the per deal margin percentages could look attractive the top line may not always be too flash. How can you compete for mindspace with the other products in the portfolio of the partner that may be giving them more sales on a more regular basis ?

The good news is that even if you are not the product that will drive the top line of the partner there are still several other good reasons for them to value a relationship with you. The key is to clearly identify the reason the partner needs you for & then ensure that you serve the partner fully in that regard. Let me focus on what some of these reasons could be :

1. Your product fills a hole in their portfolio - the product in itself may not sell that much but the fact that they have a more complete portfolio may help them make more sales overall. Conversely they may be losing deals now due to an incomplete set of offerings & they need insurance against that.

2. They believe that they can sell your product for very little incremental effort or if they can be convinced that they may be leaving money on the table. For example someone who sells computer hardware would be favorably disposed to carry desktop software as the bundle could be sold relatively easily.

3. There may be some PR value in being associated with your product - this is most often the case when the company itself is viewed as a pioneer even if this may be in some other field or if the product represents some kind of a technological advance.

4. Opportunity exists for "cross pollination" between your customer list & the partner's list. Just as you get access to the partner's customer base the partner could also benefit from your customer base & the opportunity for growth through synergy is a powerful motivator.

5. Personal relationships are sometimes undervalued - partners tend to work well with people they get along with. My advice is always to be the company (or group or person) that it's easy to work with. More often than not that removes the extra bit of friction holding things back.

I will come back to how to motivate, manage & run a profitable partnership channel in posts to follow but in closing this one let me make the obvious point that the cornerstone to business partnerships is a judicious mix of enlightened self interest & due consideration to the partner's needs - a partnership of equals is likely to progress further than a lopsided one. 

The dreaded "Let's Keep in Touch" - How to ?

A Pod of Podcasts !

One of the biggest challenges I have personally encountered in the B2B sales space is how to "keep in touch" with people we have presented ourselves to in the past but the compelling event (funding for the purchase, organisational preparedness for adoption, external factors etc.) that heralds a "live opportunity" is still some way off. It would be ideal if there was a steady stream of "non salesy" but relevant information that could be shared with such prospects with the view to staying on their radar, taking on a thought leadership position, forming a relationship & so on ! Let me introduce you to the podcast interview - done right this could do all that & also offer you the opportunity to form a warm & real relationship with the leaders in the industry.

The suggested method is :

1. First identify some well known or respected voices in the industry relevant to your product / service & approach them with the view to interview them to create a podcast. People usually want to help so in most cases where the intent of the interview is clearly to present something of real value to the community without commercializing it they will try to do so within their own constraints of time & schedule. It's important to make it as easy as possible for the interviewee to participate - so no downloading of software, no calling into international nos. & so on.

2. The topic of the interview should be mutually agreed upon - clearly this cannot be directly about your product / service. Remember the intention is to present something of real value to the audience so stick to talking about genuine problems, solutions, advances in technology etc. 

3.  The actual interview should be recorded, edited & published in as professional a manner as possible – on your own web properties as well as any third party sites & groups that allow this (for eg. Linked Groups).   

4. The podcast should also be promoted over the various social media channels - this gives you something to talk about over the lifecycle of the event. You should also request the interviewee to promote the podcast to their own followers, friends etc. This should help drive up traffic to your web properties.

5. This is also a communication that should then be sent out to the customers, partners and "warm" & "cold" prospects in your database. This is a golden opportunity to communicate with them in a “non-threatening, obligation-free manner” with the added benefit of allowing you to take a thought leadership position - almost by reflection ! 

6. The process of approaching, confirming & setting up of the interview also offers ample opportunity to build a strong & warm relationship with the leader being interviewed & to leave them with a positive feeling about your organisation. 

Even a couple of podcasts a month can feed a reasonably steady effort to reach out to your customers & prospects. What's more "Ye olde podcasts" can always be recycled when they relate to events that come up in the news cycle or when there is a need to re-establish contact with someone with a specific interest area. As an example I can point you to http://www.techpostmedia.com/podcasts - the host is perhaps not the greatest (blush, blush) but the guests are usually top notch !