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

Managing Differences - Job #1

One of my most important takeaways from Vantage Partner's Alliance University last month was the whole idea that alliances at their core, are about managing differences.

We've all heard people say that alliances are all about "finding the win-win", "looking for the joint value proposition", finding "common ground" and the like. It turns out, that while those things are important, even necessary in forging an alliance relationship, they are not sufficient.

Why?

Well, think about it. According to various studies, alliances have a 50% (or higher depending on the study) failure rate. Presumably, the alliances formed based on identified "common ground" or compelling "joint value proposition", but they didn't last. When I look back at failed partnerships in my 15+ years in alliances, the root cause of the failures was a lack of attention paid to the differences between the two organizations.

Alliance managers sit in between two organizations with different structures, business models, politics, org charts, policies, cultures, philosophies, processes, contracts, etc. etc. The list of differences is usually longer than the list of things we have in common!

When we just focus on the things we have in common, the things our two companies are completely aligned on, and ignore the long list of things where we are not aligned - where we have differences - we are inviting the inevitable conflict. Often that conflict simmers under the surface, but it is always there, like a cancer on the alliance relationship. Left untreated, the patient - our partnership - dies.

Instead, we should proactively, deliberately and intentionally, work with our partner to identify our areas of difference, with particular focus on those areas that are likely to cause conflict. It is a fool's errand to pretend that we can wish away or hope away these differences. A better strategy is to face them head on, and talk openly as a joint team about how we can manage these differences.

Managing differences is job #1 for alliance managers!

Curiosity Killed the Cat (but Saved the Alliance)

More from Vantage Partner's Alliance University class delivered by Stu Kliman.

Curiosity - genuine and honest curiosity, is a critical mindset for successful alliance managers. This is the mindset for effective conflict resolution. Why?

When we are in the midst of conflict with our partner or with an internal stakeholder, we tend to assume our intentions are good (and we are "right"), but we don't always extend the benefit of the doubt to our partners. We assume we understand their intentions (bad) and that we are in full possession of all the facts.

The fact is, the only thing we know with certainty is what's going on in our own head!

Understanding our partner's interests and intents requires breaking through our "certainty" and adopting a mindset of curiosity. "Hmmn, she has a completely different take on this situation than I do. I wonder what data she's looking at? I wonder what's her reasoning is? I wonder why she feels this way". These are the questions that start a learning dialog.

And curiosity, genuine and true curiosity about our partners interests and intents, is the starting point to resolving conflict in our alliance relationships.

Mind the Gap

Stu Kliman from Vantage Partners did an excellent session for our alliances organization last week on conflict management and resolution. My takeaways from this session, which we called SAS Alliance University, will be the subject of several blog posts.

My first takeaway I call "Mind The Gap". No, not the ubiquitous retail store!

Stu kicked off the session with a video of a difficult conversation between two alliance managers and he asked us to identify "helpful and unhelpful" behaviors. We all proceeded to diagnose the root causes of the conflict and develop a list of the "unhelpful" comments from both parties.

Stu posited that if you could put these two alliance managers in our class and have them watch the same video, they would have no problem identifying the problem behaviors. In other words, "out of the moment" they could dispassionately diagnose the "good, the bad and the ugly." We are the same way - often we know what the right thing thing to do is, but in the moment, we fail to do the right thing.

Why?

When we are in conflict ridden alliance conversations, the stakes are usually high. The success of the alliance is often on the line, and the expectations and pressure to deliver are high. This ratchets up our emotions and increases the likelihood of a bad outcome.

Stu calls this phenomenon - the "gap between our espoused beliefs and our practiced beliefs."

What does it require to close this gap? Humility and deliberate, intentional effort to practice good conflict management and resolution techniques. I'll cover these in subsequent posts.

Ironically, the more arrogant someone is about their conflict management skills, the larger the gap is between their espoused and practiced beliefs! To develop your alliance skills in this area - mind the gap!

Zero Sum Game

I think you can boil down most of the issues we face in alliance management to "scarcity mentality". Folks with scarcity mentality view life (and alliances) as a zero sum game. If you win, I lose. If I win, you lose.

Those who view the world from this perspective, have a very hard time collaborating. Viewing partnerships from this prism causes their mindset to be very self focused and "shrinks" their universe. Their "pie" is small, and their life is a constant battle to win turf, presumably at the expense of someone else. It's hard to think creatively about options and fresh new approaches when crouched in the fighting stance ready for battle!

The best cultural mindset for positive partnering and collaboration is an "abundance" mindset. You can always tell when you are dealing with a partner with this mentality. The possibilities are limitless. Collaboration with them is about making the pie bigger, not fighting over pieces of a small pie.

Let's do all we can as alliance managers to promote this mindset in our organizations - and be sure that we walk in this mindset ourselves.

Five Rules! (or Badda Bing Badda Boom Part II)

The picture above was me (metaphorically) after sitting through a conference call with a company who wanted to talk about partnering with my company. As you can see from the picture, it was not a great experience. It still amazes me how many alliance people schedule exploratory partnership conversations, but then don't take the time to prepare for those discussions!

To prevent this from happening to others, I bring you the Five Rules for Having an Exploratory Partnership Conversation!

Rule #1. Tell me what you want!

If you approach me, the onus is on YOU, to explain what you want - where you see the value in a potential partnership. Don't leave it to me to "intuit" your proposal, or guess what you want us to do together.

Rule #2. It's all about me.

I'm already working on more than I can say grace over. You want me to attend to you and this potential partnership. This means I've got to figure out what I'm not going to do so that I can do this. Which means you need to sell me on why I should care. What's in it for me?  I don't care what your alliance and product strategy is - unless it's directly relevant to what you are proposing and its value to me. Set your radio to my favorite radio station - WIIFM (What's in it for me?) and make your message compelling.

Rule #3. Know what my company does.

This might seem obvious, but as my grandmother was fond of saying "common sense ain't so common". I've gotten calls from companies who had not even bothered to look at my company's website to understand our solutions and key industry segments. It will be difficult for you to craft a compelling value proposition, much less a partnering proposition, if you don't know what I do.


Rule #4. Have a clear call to action or next step.

Loosey goosey close is simply inviting me put this at the bottom of the pile. If you get my attention, have a clear next step identified. Who do we need to engage next? What do we need to cover? How do we complete the due diligence process to get to EOJ?

Rule #5. PREPARE before you get on the phone with me!

Rules 1 through 4 pretty much indicate that you've got to do your homework. Do not throw your standard 25 slide company presentation at me and expect me to "figure it out"! Think through your pitch, develop a compelling story and "serve it up to me on a biscuit!" - meaning, clearly articulate what you want and why I should care.


Follow these rules and the odds of you having a productive dialog with your partner prospect will go up exponentially. Even if you wind up mutually determining that this is not a good partnership opportunity, at least you will have left a favorable impression, and that will do nothing but help you in the future!

The Bermuda Triangle and partner triangulation

According to Wikipedia "The Bermuda Triangle is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships allegedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances.


The "Alliance Bermuda Triangle" is typically where partners wind up when attempting "triangulation" - the pursuit of that elusive holy grail resulting from the coming together of 3 companies.


It typically goes like this..... you're working with a partner on an initiative, and he mentions, "hey, we have a partnership with Acme Technologies, we should loop them in to our discussions.  There's typically lots of enthusiasm in the beginning after a series of exploratory discussions...Lots of IGBG - "it's gonna be great" and then..... nothing.


Why? Because getting alignment between two companies is challenging enough. Adding a third to the mix increases the complexity (and risk) by an order of magnitude.


I'm not saying it can't work... I've seen a few. Just know what you're getting into, ask a lot of questions and set expectations all around.