Have you ever ridden a bicycle with gearing problems where the chain is not just clicking into the right cogwheel and maybe even hopping down to a higher gear by itself? This is very irritating as you are simply not operating at your best and a silly mechanical problem is slowing you down. I don’t like any noise coming from my bike, so gearing issues drive me crazy, especially when you can’t get into your lowest gear getting up to steep hills.
Have you ever worked with a partner company where you are regularly missing the opportunity to get in front of prospective customers or missing out of being included in a deal? Have you a partner who has the potential of introducing you to a large number of prospective customers and, although they see the value, it just doesn’t live up to its potential?
How do you diagnose the challenges with your partners? It is typically not as simple as it may seem. Add to the mix different functions and regions involved between your company and the partners and the complexity is increased.
Firstly, consider the challenge of alignment between your partner’s business process and how your process fits with theirs. How well does your product fit within the partner’s business?
Partner Fit is an exercise in understanding the partner’s business and capabilities, and then determining how your product fits within their business:
1) Similar Target Customer
• The ideal partner has a number of existing customers who are your target customers with relationships with relevant decision makers
2) Product/Proposition Fit
• Is your product a suitable upsell or cross-sell for the partner’s business?
• Do your products technically fit?
• Does the partner’s technical skills suit in delivery; implementation and support?
3) Business Plans
• How prominent can your product be helping your partner meet their business goals?
• What is the priority of your product within their business?
• To what extent is it financially worth the partner’s investment in selling your product? What are the motivators?
4) Marketing and Sales
• Does the partner’s current methods of Lead Generation work for your product?
• Are the partner’s sales process stages, the target decision makers and the capabilities along the process suitable to generate success for your product?
5) People and Culture
• Is the partner’s business culture similar to how your company works?
• Could these two groups of people do business together?
Any misalignment, or potential misalignment, can be identified through these evaluation categories. Within the detail of these steps is how the business processes overlap and align. In understanding the mechanics of your partner’s, you can assess where your product and related business process fits with theirs to help accelerate both businesses.
As with the bike’s gearing clicking, there is much depth behind the overview analysis that may remove the noise but not identify and deal properly with the core issues.