Soft skills matter!

I get a little crazy when I hear people refer to critical alliance management skills as "soft skills". There is absolutely nothing "soft" about the skills we employ as alliance professionals to establish, develop and manage alliance relationships!

Alliance managers with skills in verbal and written communications, critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, alignment and negotiation - create winning alliance partnerships.

Companies with alliance managers lacking these skills don't make good partners. They do things like:

• Call you with 24 hours notice telling you they're "bringing an exec with them to the meeting and can you set up a meeting with your VP of Sales". Ah no.
• Insist you connect them with your sales rep without providing a compelling reason for the connection.
• Continually promote their interests without attending to your company's interests.
• Set up exploratory calls with my company with a ton of their stakeholders on the line without having had "the call before the call" to get his team aligned before engaging us.

These are but a few examples I've experienced. These moves didn't exactly inspire confidence. I'm careful with my credibility and chits with stakeholders. I won't put my internal credibility on the line for a partner that doesn't understand basic alliance management principles.

Deploying unskilled alliance managers on your partnerships has a material impact on whether or not companies want to partner with you. Over the years, I have de-prioritized partners who assigned unskilled alliance managers to manage the relationship.

If a partner doesn't value the partnership enough to assign skilled professionals to manage it then neither do I!

Survival Tips for "Flying Solo" in an Alliance

I often say that the alliance manager plays a role similar to an airplane pilot when it comes to managing a strategic alliance relationship. Like pilots, alliance managers are responsible for getting the alliance "off the ground", navigating the partnership through turbulence and weather conditions (changing market conditions, competing interests, conflicting organizational models, competitive threats, etc.), and "landing safely" (delivering the goals of the alliance).

Throughout the flight, we have to get our passengers - internal and external stakeholders (sales, marketing, legal, professional services, etc.) aligned so we can achieve alliance results. During most flights, an airplane will be off course for about 95% of its flight. Similarly, during the life of an alliance, the alliance manager has to work continuously to keep the partnership on course. Alliance management, like fllying looks effortless, but doing it well requires a lot of skill and expertise.

Pilots usually partner with skilled co-pilots to build successful flight plans and coordinate actions during flight. Alliance managers on strategic, complex partnerships also work with a "co-pilot" - their alliance counterpart at the partner's organization - to help build the joint alliance plan, manage conflict, and navigate the partnership.

But what do you do when you are "flying solo" - when you don't have an alliance manager assigned to the partnership from the partner's company?

1. Determine if you're flying a "Cessna or a Dreamliner". 
• If this is "Cessna" - a partnership with a start-up or a small partner - it's highly unlikely that they'll have a full time alliance manager on staff. Just make sure the person they assign to work with you on the partnership has authority to make decisions and expect that you are going to have to lead the joint development and execution process. If this is a "Dreamliner", and this is a strategic partnership with a large company, you are going to need a skilled co-pilot to get this thing off the ground. Without one, expect a very bumpy ride.
2. Build your Flight Plan. 
• Weather you're flying a Cessna or a Dreamliner, if you're flying solo you really need to make sure you have a flight plan. Your flight plan, or alliance execution plan is what you'll use to ensure you get to your destination. Without a co-pilot, you'll be doing most of the heavy lifting. 
3. Communicate frequently with the "Control Tower". 
• Identify and build strong connections and relationships with executive sponsors at the partner's company. Without an alliance counterpart, you'll might not get a lot of assistance navigating the partner organization and building executive relationships, but it will be critical that you identify executive sponsors and get them connected with their counterparts within your company. You will need to ensure that you understand their interests and that you align the partner plan to support their interests and the interests of your internal sponsors.
4. Plan for turbulence. 
• Even under the best of circumstances, alliance management can be challenging work with lots of ups and downs. Good alliance managers always plan for contingencies and identify and manage risk. Flying solo adds another level of risk to the flight, so you'll need to set expectations with your executive sponsors accordingly. 

Follow these survival tips and you'll help guide your partnership through friendlier skies!

Oil and Water DO mix

Recently I heard a chef being interviewed on the radio discussing his book on cooking myths. He said the biggest cooking myth is adage that oil and water don't mix. According to the chef, oil and water DO mix - when you add an emulsifying agent.

That got me thinking about the role of Alliance Managers. We are great emulsifying agents!

Our job is to keep things that don't normally stick together - like say two account execs from two different companies - together. Left to their own devices, two sales reps from two different companies can be like oil and water - they will not stay together without an emulsifying agent. Enter the alliance manager.

The role of the alliance manager is to keep the radio tuned to every reps favorite radio station - WIIFM or What's In it For Me. We've got to make it clear to both reps what's in it for each of them to collaborate, and we have to build a bridge of trust between the two parties. At SAS we use an Account Introduction Form (AIF) and an Account Engagement Agreement (AEA) to set expectations, build trust and provide a framework for the sales collaboration.

Key "emulsifying" skills for alliance managers are alignment, conflict management and resolution, negotiation, and most of all - strong EQ or emotional intelligence.

Alliance managers employing these skills will keep their alliances "sticking together."

Top 5 Things Your Executives Need to Know About Alliances, #5 It's Not (just) About Us!

It's Not (just) About Us!

To get what we want in a partnership, we have to have at least passing interest in what our partner wants. This seems like such a simple concept, but it's amazing how many executives lose sight of this. As alliance professionals, if we're advocating for the partner, it's not because we've "gone native", its because we recognize that if we don't work within our organization to ensure that our partner's interests are being met, we will never get the partner to deliver to our interests.

Alliance management is about aligning interests - ours and theirs. We have to be clear about what we want, and we have to be equally as clear about what our partner wants.

I worked with a sales exec many years ago who was fond of saying "bad deals don't last" - meaning that if we use short term leverage to coerce our partners into getting what we want, while completely subordinating their urgent interests, the partner will always find a way out of the deal, I don't care what's in the contract.

So, if this is a partnership we care about - one where they have something to offer that we need (is there any other kind?) - then we must attend to their interests. When we are at the table with our partner, putting our interests on the table and looking for alignment on mutual interests, then and only then, will we have a shot at realizing the potential of the alliance relationship.

So, the next time you are in a meeting with a partner executive, sometimes the best question you can ask them is "What do you want?"

Top 5 Things Your Executives Need to Know About Alliances, #4 Don't Try This At Home

Don't Try This at Home

In the most recent IBM CEO Study, top performing companies were more than 28% more likely to leverage partnerships for innovation than their under performing counterparts. Top performing firms value collaborative skills and recognize that recruiting and developing people with these skills are critical to their competitive success.

My boss is fond of saying that Alliance management is a profession - not a hobby. Alliance Management requires a specific skill set. Good alliance managers don't grow on trees, they are not a dime a dozen. Good alliance managers have good business savvy, strong conflict management skills, good "EQ"- emotional intelligence, and strong political and organization navigation skills.

You wouldn't put an unskilled sales rep to manage a strategic customer account, so why would you take someone who couldn't cut it in sales and put them on a strategic partnership?

To drive innovation through alliances, bring in the professionals!

Top 5 Things Your Executives Need to Know About Alliances - #3

Alliances Make the Pie Bigger

There is sometimes a misconception that working with partners is a “zero sum game”  - the more money a partner makes on a deal, the less money your company will make on a deal. In actual fact, more times than not, a partner will help make the size of the pie bigger – “supersize” the deal if you will. How? In a few ways.

1) Scale

At my company, we have several partners that are much larger organizations with thousands of employees and deep presence in Fortune 500 firms. We also have a very large network of smaller partners, who may not have the same reach as the larger partners, but do have deep domain expertise in areas where we need it, and are "boots on the ground" for us in many accounts.  In both instances, partnering with these firms enhances our reach, drives customer satisfaction, and extends our influence.     

2) The vision thing
Many customers have at least one "trusted adviser" consulting organization that they engage at the C level to advise them on vision and strategy. These firms have significant influence with customers and in the IT industry, determine or influence the "stack" (software/hardware solution components) that is ultimately sold to the customer. Partnering with these firms early can put you in the "pole position" in this process and uncover opportunities that you did not even know were there. And turn what for you might have been a departmental sale ($) into a much larger enterprise ($$$) sale. 

3) Access to new markets
Often companies will use partners to establish their presence in new geographic markets. In this case, partners not only increase the size of the pie, they serve up the pie, too!


4) Deal acceleration
Partners can really help provide account intelligence that help you identify potential risks to deal closure. Partners can also help you mitigate those risks to help increase the odds of closure. They can also help validate your solution (through Proof of Concept support for example) and can accelerate your sales cycle, helping you close deals faster. All of these efforts increase your revenues.

Next post - Top 5 Things Your Executives Need to Know About Alliances -  #4 : Alliances Help Drive Innovation

Top 5 Things Your Executives Need to Know about Alliances - #2

    Alliances are a Team Sport

The alliances organization is a completely dependent organization  – that is to say, we are completely dependent upon the involvement of other organizations to successfully develop and execute alliances. When we make a commitment to a partner, we are making a corporate commitment to that partner on behalf of our company. This means that many organizations at our company (sales, product marketing, product management, professional services, legal, field marketing, external communications, etc.) have a role to play and will be engaged early and often as we establish and develop partnerships.

Therefore, as an executive, in order to ensure high performing alliances, it's not only important that you have strong collaboration skills within your alliances organization, you must also ensure that these skills permeate across the company. You want an "alliance aware" organization - where all the departments that are involved in establishing and developing alliances understand how to collaborate, manage conflict, ensure alignment and drive positive outcomes for BOTH companies.

Alliances are a team sport!

Next post: #3 Alliances Make the Pie Bigger