Top 5 Things Your Executives Need to Know about Alliances - #1

As alliance managers, sometimes our biggest sales job of all is convincing our internal executives of the value of alliances and what it takes to make them successful. Among the key questions we need to answer are:

• What is involved in establishing new partnerships? 
• Why do we need partners? 
• What do alliance managers do anyway? 
• Why do I care?

Do you get these questions from your executives? 


In my next several posts I'll cover the Top 5 Things Your Executives Need to Know About Alliances.

1.       Alliance Relationships Require Care and Feeding

Alliance relationships are much like personal relationships, they require care and feeding to establish and grow. Alliance relationships are made up of a series of personal relationships between executives and stakeholders at both companies. Managing these relationships, developing the shared vision and constructing and executing the joint business plan, is the raison d’etre of the Alliance Manager. All alliances are established based on a promise of mutual value. The role of the Alliance Manager is “value creation” – orchestrating resources, aligning strategic goals, managing conflict to ensure that both our company and our partner realize mutual value.

Next post - #2: Alliances are a Team Sport