How do you align your partnership strategy with the company's vision, mission and goals?

In the federal government space conduct research on what potential partners are prime contractors on contracts that would benefit your business and align with theirs. Do they resell software and services and you are a software provider? Do they work with the departments and agencies on contracts you are interested in? Set up a meeting and confirm a fit. If they are interested in you subcontracting with them you will need to provide them with additional information and set up an agreement.

Aligning the partnerships' team's goals and KPIs with the company's top 3 goals for the fiscal year has been a sure-fire way to drive strong business impact. The company's goals guide your priorities and decision making, which ensures that partnerships' impact to the top and bottom line revenue is clearly measurable and relevant.

Aligning a partnership strategy with a company's vision, mission, and goals is crucial for success. At our organization, we ensure that collaborations go beyond transactions, reflecting shared values and contributing to our overarching vision. Each partnership is strategically chosen to support our mission and long-term goals, making it an integral part of our journey towards success.

To get started, consider developing a partnership strategy document to clearly communicate the company's vision, mission and goals to partners, while staying in line with the company's objectives. Utilize quarterly reviews, evaluations and an open-door policy with partners to ensure alignment with the strategy, so that it is tailored to the company’s present and future needs.

Start with the end in mind. Understanding your vision, mission and goals is important because your partnership strategy has to be designed to achieve these goals. Ask relevant questions to map all things important for your business.

While this is important work, don’t oversize the scope of a partnership in its beginnings. Achieving one great thing together is worth more than accomplishing 80% of each of 20 objectives. Partnerships should start with a very specific outcome in mind and grow over time.

Knowing which partners to work with is the Holy Grail of partner marketing. Some organisations have hundreds or thousands of partners that they could work with and invest in, but the marketing dollars they spend on them do not always see a good return. With limited marketing resource and budget, and tougher ROI criteria they need a smarter approach. We engaged the University of Huddersfield to do some research on this topic and they came up with seven factors for a successful partnership. These factors map into two overall success criteria: Strategic Fit and Engagement. Read more here: https://coteriecommunity.global/which-partners-should-i-focus-on/

One thing to be mindful of is the commitment intent of a “partnership” and the balance of resources both companies are willing & able to put in. In my career, I have seen many corporate relationships called partnerships- which in fact are simply one company doing 90+% of the heavy lifting. Don’t get caught in the trap of calling something a partnership and expecting results if both parties are not willing to invest time, money and people to ensure the initiatives success. Set clear objectives and get written agreements with scheduled process checks to goals and include exit language that you are willing to abide by.

"Ideal Partners" - partnerships can support multiple objectives anything from increasing value proposition of a solution offering, to enabling sales via referrals. An ideal partnership starts with aligning the org's strategic objectives with the capabilities/value/resources any given partnership can bring. Starting from this point, each and every partner becomes "ideal".

The most effective partnerships are founded on flexible agreements and a significant amount of non-formal alignment. This does not contradict the necessity of formal contracts. To achieve this, it is crucial to have cultural compatibility. Assess the cultural compatibility between your organization and potential partners. Seek collaborators who share similar values, ethical principles, and operational guidelines.

A key to a successful partnership is to create a synergy of skills and technical capabilities. Ensuring that you and the partner complementing each other and create ways to enrich your business - either by adopting new technical knowledge, ways of working or even a programme to move employees from one org to another, is crucial for retaining long term advantages of your partnership.

At the start of the partnership, it's never about moving mountains. It's more like planting the first tree at the right spot with enough room leading to the growth of a forest. Vision, mission, and goals flow top down and expectations must be set from both the parties' senior leadership, with enough space to strengthen the strategic partnership over time. Outcomes trump Outputs, and hence in the first 6 months of the partnership, focus heavily on achieving outcomes together to lay a solid foundation for long term growth.

Once you have shortlisted your partners, do try and have discussion with the partner teams to map out clear objectives and expectations from both sides. This will help align both sides on what is possible jointly, and individually and set the stage for launching the partnership.

Once you have the structure in place, go ahead, implement and monitor. Just as your business needs evolve over time, the structure, focus and deliverable of your partnership may need to evolve. Thus continuous feedback and a mechanism to respond and update your partnership structure and operationals is required.

To ensure success in any partnership, the following should be established: 1. Establish clear roles and responsibilities for each partner and define performance expectations. 2. Foster effective communication channels and ensure timely responses. 3. Set up a process to handle disputes and differences of opinions. 4. Utilize technology to monitor, measure, and evaluate the progress and success of the partnership. 5. Develop strategies to promote trust and collaboration between partners.

Learning is a lifetime process. And this is also true for partnerships. Due to the joint structure of partnerships, where multiple stakeholders come together to use synergies towards mutual goals, this is a great opportunity to learn and improve with the learning achieved.

To build and strengthen a strategic partnership, you need to celebrate successes and acknowledge challenges, share lessons and best practices, review and update the agreement as needed, foster a culture of trust and respect, actively seek solutions to conflicts, and develop a clear communication strategy.

Two additional thoughts that come to mind… Take the time to fully define the business relationship: Once you've established contact with potential partners, it's essential to define what the partnership will look like. During the defining process compare company core values to ensure the business will align moving forward. Regular communication and evaluation: Once you've established a partnership, it's essential to maintain regular communication and evaluation to ensure the relationship is meeting your goals. Establish your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track the results of your efforts, and make adjustments as necessary.