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Alliances and Partnership

From the category archives:

Alliances and Partnership

Do’s and Dont’s of Alliances with the Big Guys

by Lilia Shirman on November 18, 2010

in Alliances and Partnership,Entrepreneurship

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of presenting, together with my friend and colleague Ken Goldberg, to a group of technology entrepreneurs brought together by CRDF and TEC.  We talked about establishing alliances with much larger companies – a topic that’s often daunting for new ventures. Its a subject that’s near and dear to our hearts because we’ve spent lots of time on both sides of those relationships.  Some do’s and dont’s that Ken and I discussed:

Do

  1. Have a Plan – Develop an approach, time line and road-map. It will focus your efforts and help you assess progress.
  2. Be Relevant – Understand what’s in it for the partner and the partner’s customers
  3. Be Aggressive – Attack top down and bottom up, be creative, be persistent.
  4. Behave Like a Mature Company – Have policies, approval processes, multi-level teams.  Don’t send in your CEO until you have a meeting with a key decision maker.
  5. Be Unique – Articulate what you can offer that others in your category can’t.
  6. Think Big Dollars – Demonstrate that you can have a big impact on revenue and help the partner win big deals.
  7. Prove It – Be ready to show integration, value add, or joint customers.
  8. Find a Sponsor – Use your network to find an internal cheerleader (or 2)
  9. Negotiate Smart – Share the risk and get mutual commitments
Don’t
  1. Bet on one partner -We’ve seen multi-million dollar companies disappear because the one big partner changed course.
  2. Be vague – Vague, unsupportable claims about your products or capabilities create doubt, not progress.
  3. Lie – Exaggerating the number of people on your team? Claiming a few extra deployments?   Savvy bus dev professionals will notice, and likely drop you from consideration.
  4. Over-promise – Either you’ll fail and lose the one opportunity at a critical alliance, or you’ll be forced to commit too many resources, distracting from your company’s other important priorities, and risking too much on a single relationship.  (see #1)
  5. Expect or make 1-sided investments – Expect some skin in the game from the partner.  It shows you have confidence in the value of your own investment.
  6. Forget it’s a relationship – Focusing too much on the deal and ignoring that you’re building a long-term relationship is a mistake.  Signing the agreement is when the real work starts.  Even if you never sign an agreement, the people you worked with may change their minds next year, or next month when they switch jobs.
  7. Give up – If not today, tomorrow. If not this decision maker, call another one. If not this company, talk to all their competitors.
Have a few of your own? Please share.

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