Go Ugly Early!

I was speaking to a colleague today and we were comparing notes on the difficulty some alliance managers have in asking the tougher questions in the qualification process. I told him that a sales executive I worked with long ago told me something that has stuck with me ever since.

He told me that the best thing you can do in these situations is to "go ugly early". He told me that he always wants to know what the show stoppers are in month 1 of discussions, vs. month 9.

I told my colleague this story and he laughed. He said that he believed that this was exactly the right perspective. If you're having discussions with a partner about joint development, don't you want to know their position on IP, pretty early in the discussion? It's amazing to me that some alliance folks will say - "oh, I don't want to bring that up now, I might scare them off". I think that's the completely wrong approach. You should be thinking, I want to find out their position (and tell them mine) early, because if we're far apart, I need to know that now.

Being afraid to have a tough conversation, doesn't make the need for the discussion disappear. All you're doing then is kicking the can up the road, only to have to deal with it later, when both parties have invested a lot of time, and perhaps also reinforced some bad assumptions.

Now that's ugly!