This is the most important aspect of this. Anyone can hand partners sales and marketing collateral, but understanding what motivates and drives your partners can mean the difference between engaged and absent partners. When you know this, you can provide your partners with the right content and enablement at the right time in the right way that is relevant to them and helps them be more successful in their own goals.

Recognizing and empathizing with your partner's needs is crucial. If you're sincerely committed to helping your partner succeed, assume the role of their personal coach. This is the path to success—motivate, educate, and establish a trust-based environment for authentic support. Consistent and effective communication is a MUST for building a resilient and mutually successful relationship.

Understanding what your partners goals and objectives are is crucial. Being able to understand through their lens and see how you can work together to meet your collective goals is next. And being transparent to build trust will help solidify a long-term relationship.

Understanding your partners perceivable wins in the alliance is critical. What are they looking to gain from the partnership? Is it net new pipeline, increased stickiness, upsell/cross-sell or brand building through co-marketing efforts? If you are not in sync with these goals from the onset, there will likely be misalignment in the partner strategy. A key aspect of this partner discovery must include being multi-threaded, similar to the approach of an Enterprise sales cycle. Executive, product, services and sales buy-in early can build a strong foundation for a successful better together story.

It's important to understand what motivates your partner and what they may want to accomplish before you begin working together. If you are aware of their needs, goals, challenges, and preferences, it's easier to maintain their engagement and alignment with you on the partnership's overall goals. Start with the basics: examine the company's 10-K to grasp their financials and strategic direction, read their latest press releases, and explore their recent product launches. This not only demonstrates your commitment but also provides valuable insights into their operational focus. Most importantly, practice active listening during interactions with your counterparts in order to find the way forward to creating shared success.

Be available. Add you contact details to every email you send, have details open on Linkedin - make it easy for people to reach you. This is so basic but so important and can make you stand out in an age of video call appointment slots and web contact forms.

Maintain open lines of communication with your partners. Regularly update them on product updates, market trends, and any changes in your strategy. Building strong relationships promotes trust and collaboration. Conversely, a lack of communication can result in lost sales and reduced confidence in your brand. Partner conflicts, misalignment of goals and inconsistent communication can be incredibly detrimental to partner relationships, and will at the very least stall growth plans. It is important to establish clear communication channels and ensure partners clearly understand your expectations and objectives.

To effectively communicate with partners, do some planning. Think through the next Quarter, 6-months and year. What is the goal? What are the challenges? What programs, and resources are available to them? What key initiatives will you drive together and what needs to be communicated. With this as your core guide, you can simultaneously focus on ever-improving your authentic communications, and negotiation skills to make sure whatever you are communicating lands well. And an added bonus - give guidance on what communication channels your are watching so they do not need to. Take something off their To Do list to score points.

Trust is the backbone with which successful partnerships stand tall. Trust is built in drops but lost in buckets. So, how do you build trust? Over communicate and be transparent. As a leading professional services firm, we deal with multiple cloud service providers. If, for example, AWS comes to us asking to explore a potential co-sell opportunity with one of our accounts, but, we know that they are a GCP shop, we would let AWS know that it's not possible. This applies vice versa as well...if we were to approach AWS asking to explore co-selling opportunity on a particular account, but if AWS is already working with a competitor on that account, we expect them to be 100% transparent with us.

Partner comms channels must be simple, bespoke, best-fit and flexible, and are usually multi-channel. It’s important to evaluate each of these channels, and place the most effective and valuable information for each individual on their preferred channel. Also, use active listening and curiosity during this exploration process to identify best-fit cadence. Some will prefer consistent comms, others will prefer set times that suit their bandwidth. This will set expectations and maintain a structure that suits everyone involved. Ensure alternative frameworks and channels in place, so if either party needs to pivot, then comms are maintained to effective standards. Lastly, comms channels should be incentivised so they are proactively used.

On-going and consistent communication is vital to successful partnerships. You not only need to enable and support your partners, you need to stay top of mind with them. Your partners work with a number of vendors and you want to make sure you are front and center in their minds as they engage their customers. They need to know that you are right there with them, supporting them on the front lines. So, yes, give them the product enablement. Give them sales support. Definitely give them marketing tips and guidance. Everything they need to grow a successful practice around your offering. Just make sure to do so in an on-going, consistent manner. They say showing up is half the battle. I say showing up consistently will win the war.

The focus is on helping the partner grow a successful practice around your offering. Go beyond the standard enablement and sales tools to work with them to develop joint demand generation activities and campaigns that will help build a pipeline of prospects. We do an initial a launch campaign when they come on board. Then, as they begin to develop sales muscle and identify prospects, we do a Demand Gen workshop to create a joint set of activities around a specific focus to help accelerate their success.

This is a key aspect, especially in indirect sales partnerships. Training and co-marketing are the main activities that enable the partner to be active and productive. We offer them training, coaching, and mentoring to help them develop their skills and knowledge of our product. I also provide them with marketing, sales, and technical tools and materials to help them promote and deliver their services. I also make it easy for them to access our support team, portal, and community, and resolve their issues and queries promptly.

It is important to provide partners with support and resources, but in a controlled way. Do the due diligence to identify the most important resources, channels and information. Save them time from searching and present them in a playbook or other such document

Empower your partners by equipping them with the essential tools and resources for success. Extend training opportunities, provide access to expertise, and establish a robust support system. This not only enhances their capabilities but also signals a steadfast commitment to their growth. It fosters a shared objective of mutual success, laying the foundation for a partnership built on solidarity.

Effective partner recognition extends beyond annual awards. It's important to acknowledge the small but significant milestones: celebrate the first integration, initial wins, biggest achievements, and new logos. Incorporate a variety of acknowledgments, from personalized notes to social media highlights and special mentions in company gatherings. Consistently expressing gratitude and recognizing achievements, both big and small, builds a stronger sense of loyalty and motivation in the partnership. This approach reinforces a culture of mutual success and appreciation.

Showcase their success stories and testimonials. I also provide them with incentives, commissions, bonuses, and discounts based on their performance and results. It is also interesting to test a gamified environment, where partners can be rewarded with points and badges based on rankings. By recognizing partners' efforts, you can motivate them, increase their satisfaction and retention.

With great success comes great reward, as you go back to the purpouse of the partnership and ground zero of the project all will remember why it was started. Also all will remember the hard work , overachieved goals and hardships. Making sure that contributions and deliverables are recognized is key and more than that it should be clear in the project book the conditions for success and rewards.

Acredito que qualquer relacionamento de constrói e se solidifica quando os dois lados ganham. Esse ganho pode ser ilustrado de várias formas, como comissões, descontos, programa de pontos, ações de marketing em conjunto que dê mais visibilidade ao parceiro, e até mesmo retornar os benefícios da parceria para um cliente em comum, como desconto em produtos e serviços. Acredito que todos precisem ganhar algo para de fato funcionar, e com certeza oferecer um bom suporte e um ótimo atendimento.

Make sure you documented the Goals, Objectives and and Key Performance Indicators of a successful partnership. Often there are just assumptions on both sides that do not match. With concrete outcomes, you can easily and authentically reward partners when the Goals are realized.

Iterate, iterate, iterate. Your ability to leverage your mutual value proposition depends on feedback that will help the partnership progress. For example, don't wait for a QBR to show you that your partnership is underperforming, and be proactive about trying to understand why you aren't seeing the results you had hoped for. When soliciting free-form feedback, make it clear that you will listen without interrupting, thus establishing a safe place for your partners. Be transparent about the metrics that matter most and work to find the levers that will encourage growth.

Foster a culture where feedback flows freely, actively seeking insights from your partners. View feedback not merely as a performance metric but as a catalyst for improvement. Demonstrating responsiveness to their input fortifies the collaborative relationship, fostering a dynamic partnership grounded in continuous refinement.

A great partnership as the name says involves exchange of data/feedback/insights. For large complex partnership projects it's always helpful conduct an executive QBR session where all are reminded of the: Why ? What ? How ? of the project and presented with actual vs planned results and action plans. Executive aligment and support is key in all stages of those projects.

Focus on fact-based feedback predicated on the Goals, Objectives, and KPIs of the Partnership. Make sure focus is first on the Process issues and only then go to the People issues.

Providing clear and straightforward ways for partners to give honest feedback is huge, both for the success of your program and for the strengthening of your individual partner relationships. And then after you receive that feedback, find ways to implement meaningful changes. In cases where you can’t make a change to satisfy the feedback of a partner, it goes back to honest and open communication.

Building upon the fundamentals is key in partnerships, much like in sports. Without a solid foundation, chasing after innovation can lead to quick wins that don't last. For sustainable growth, partnership professionals should blend creativity and entrepreneurship with a strong foundation, not just chase new ideas. Michael Jordan said it best: 'You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, you just get good at doing it the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down, and everything you do will rise.' This principle is vital in partnerships, reminding us of the importance of executing the fundamentals at a high level while developing and innovating new ideas off of that strong base to meet our shared goals.

Embrace innovation as a joint endeavor. Regularly explore new ideas, technologies, and strategies hand in hand with your partners. Be adaptive, evolving alongside their changing needs and the dynamic currents of industry trends. A partnership that innovates together not only remains relevant but also stands as a testament to dynamism and sustained engagement.

Clients buy solutions. Identify the business problems you can help solve and innovate around an end-to-end solution where you and your partners can provide that solution or value to the market together. This will reward your company and incentivize partners to work jointly with you to drive an integrated sales cycle.

This important phase involves delving into uncharted territories of ideas, opportunities, and solutions, hand in hand with your partners. It's about being agile and responsive to the ever-changing market conditions, shifting customer demands, and evolving expectations of your partners. Collaboration is key; it's about joining forces on projects, initiatives, and campaigns that bring mutual benefits. More than just working together, it's about co-creating value and making a significant impact on your shared audiences.

This step encapsulates almost all other steps. The other partner may have an alternative view of same goals or an alternate vision altogether. Evolution is a strong mechanism of elevating one's emotional quotient. Imbibing the other's ideas in one's own path and highlighting your achievements and how they can assist the partners in accomplishing their respective objectives is the hallmark of succesful innovative partnerships. This builds trust and trust manufactures miracles. And business miracles are the stuff that dreams are made of.

Identifying the right, better together, partners is critical. If, together, you can provide meaningful value where 1+1 = 3+ the other things tend to fall into place. Sometimes that requires understanding and overcoming, hopefully minor, solution overlaps but if the focus is on providing real customer value and streamlining the process to allow the customer realize the value there is a compelling reason for you and the partner to be engaged.

Besides the usual advice, what I’ve found key (ie partnerships sink when you get this wrong) is: 1. Picking a sufficiently important goal - even if they’re excited about your idea, if it’s not a top priority / not driving a core goal / not offering enough upside, you won’t get their time or attention. 2. Embracing the elephants in the room - Flag potential points of risk, conflict, and failure early. Especially if you have common capabilities / might want the same slices of the pie, flag and discuss early to divide responsibilities + benefits fairly and stop issues before they can sprout. You’ll build trust, de-risk the work, and get them more candid / engaged than if you sweep these under the rug.

Ensure you have a clearly defined better together story. Set clear goals and expectations: Be transparent about what you hope to achieve by working together, and understand what the partner hope to achieve working with you. Build the plan, work the plan, revise the plan. This needs to be done with rigor. Communicate regularly. Don't just contact partners when you need something. Check in often to provide updates, share insights, and look for feedback.

Three things most important while engagingwith customers:- 1) Integrity 2) Transparency 3) Customer satisfaction Competition weaknesses is an opportunity to satisfy customer. Once satisfaction is earned its long-term relationship can be built up.

I am firmly convinced that the foundation of a successful partnership extends beyond mere agreements and encompasses social contracts too. This bond is forged through a shared interest and a deep comprehension of what benefits both parties. Inherent in this partnership is a natural and intrinsic duty to support each other. Creating a social contract stems from empathetically considering the other person's perspective, recognizing the significance of each partner's contribution, and building on heartfelt values.