Adventures in alliances land #6 – permanent conversations; account planning
This newsletter I’ll continue the theme of ‘permanent conversations’ that occurred to me during “CIOFEST Developing Digital Leadership”.? A ‘permanent conversation’ is something that has been true forever and despite learning it well needs continual effort to align for successful partnerships.? They are points of debate and friction that are enduring and therefore need continual attention, adjustment and intervention from professional strategic alliances practitioners.? Last weeks was culture differences that arise from the different economic imperatives of technology and professional services firms.? This week was one nominate by a reader (thank you) for account planning.
I’ve been thinking, doing and writing about strategic alliances for more than 20 years.? When something in the alliances space catches my attention that I can share, I will – so if ecosystems, partnerships and alliances are your gig and your passion too I hope you’ll find these scribblings useful.? If you enjoy this article please follow me, subscribe, like, comment and repost.? My book on strategic alliances is here if you’d like to hear more adventures in alliances land.?
I’ve taken a chunk of the Strategic Alliances Fieldbook from chapter 8 and pasted it below.? Four years after writing it the principles still feel just as relevant.
As an important part of a joint GTM plan, the key account programme is worth jumping into in some detail. The process of agreeing which companies to approach and getting the distinct cultures of the PS and tech account teams to gel and work effectively is a ‘hot spot’ for all alliances. On a great day, the two teams pick an account, confirm the alliance is relevant, produce a compelling joint proposal and move seamlessly into delivery. On a bad day, there will be a year of misunderstandings and distrust before someone throws the towel in on attempting to work together on that account. A market approach to high volumes of medium-size companies will have a very different complexion to one targeting a small number of large enterprises. The former will need to be heavily data and marketing led to generate leads. The latter will be very reliant on a robust process for insight sharing and interaction between the account teams.
As an example of targeting enterprise accounts, below is a simple version of an approach the authors have found works when applied in a structured way. Given the very high value of fast and effective account planning, developing your own version is something we recommend. The first step to originate opportunities is to select the target accounts. As suggested earlier in Chapter 3, we’ve found a clear selection criterion to kick off with is helpful in ensuring accounts being nominated make sense for both parties, and most importantly, the potential end customer. A few steps to select the accounts that we’ve called profiling are illustrated below.
Assuming it’s a central alliances team doing the nominating, the next step is some internal validation from the account teams to see if they will support targeting their account. If they do, we’ve found a high-level summary of information about the account (we’ve called it an account discovery form) helps with an introduction call. A handful of bullet points exchanged before the account teams talk does wonders for building a bit of trust in reciprocal information sharing and getting the conversation started. It also gives a bit of substance to an agenda to know what the talking points should be. The account introduction call must involve the most senior leaders for the account or someone specifically delegated for that purpose. Research calls with other account team members is useful, but their opinion is not always a reliable predictor of whether the account leadership will endorse the alliance approaching their client. Final step, assuming the two account teams wish to proceed, is the alliance team confirming that the target is still a priority account, and importantly that the chemistry of the account teams feel compatible.? When an account is confirmed as a priority key account, the next step will be a joint account workshop with multiple members of the account team, as shown below.
The objective of the joint account meeting is to compare notes and explore in detail how the customer stakeholders are likely to react to the value proposition and agree how to approach them. With a plan agreed to introduce the alliances offering, the account teams need to make contact and test if the idea feels relevant to stakeholders in the suspect account. Of course, it could immediately fall out of the process if the feedback from the client is ‘no thanks’! Assuming there is some interest and the account is confirmed as a prospect, the most predictable way for both parties to move forwards is a joint meeting with the client. If that goes well, get the opportunity in the CRM pipeline and set off in pursuit!
We’ve seen all the permutations possible for the tech and PS companies to make substantial contact with the suspect client, and a well-prepared, three-way meeting with a tangible proposal to address a challenge the client acknowledges is by far the most effective. Of course, there will have been a few contacts before any three-way meeting led by whoever knows the customer stakeholders the best to test their interest. Beware of one of the alliance partners continuing meetings without the other for extended periods though. If the alliance is a genuine combination of value, the prospect will likely have to experience first-hand that combination to feel it. Too many times the authors have witnessed an account team member having a tentative qualification conversation with a prospect, and through lack of confidence withdrawing too early to declare that the offering is not relevant. A three-way meeting gives the prospect first-hand exposure to the whole alliance. Importantly, it’s also received as a signal of trustworthiness by both alliance partners that they are sharing contact with the client and there are no hidden conversations. For the alliance, it’s also a sign of commitment, in the sense that the PS and tech firms have indicated a preference in working together that is visible to the prospect. Whilst this is a bit of a ‘line in the sand’, it’s by no means permanent. The prospect may request swapping one of the parties in the alliance, and that’s a legitimate reason to qualify out and re-engage with a different consortium.
This assumes the alliance is proactively originating interest from prospects. The situation would be different of course if it’s a more formal process. A Request for Proposal (RFP) run by procurement, for example, will be designed to eliminate emotion and differentiation from the process. Particularly if there are competing firms involved, it’s unlikely that genuine collaboration between the alliance partners will work until the client is in the final stages of selection, at which point they will probably insist on joint meetings. In the two processes suggested above, a couple of documents have been mentioned briefly. At the risk of appearing over-prescriptive, we’ve included a few examples below because it might help validate what you are already doing, or for new alliances, maybe it will provide a few ideas for what a template might capture. The irony of sharing these templates is not lost on the authors. On the one hand, entrepreneurial account teams put very little value or time on perceived bureaucracy. On the other hand, it’s this aversion to committing pen to paper on account planning type activities which gives value for these kinds of templates. The authors have found that effective account discovery and origination is only possible with some semblance of structure. Without it, there will be endless hours of superficial conversations that struggle to get to the substance of an opportunity, or to commit the teams to executing a joint follow-up plan which this case study shows.
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Figure 8.11 Case Study Structured Key Account Programme In real life….a case study
As another illustration of why designing a structured key account programme will pay back, consider this example. A PS account team for a large bank sat in an account discovery workshop for half a day with their peers from a large cloud company. The objective was to explore if there was a joint proposition related to banking regulation. Each team fielded their most senior account leaders, a couple of account team members and some specialists. Given the effort it had taken to organise, the duration of the meeting and the seniority of the team, the time cost of that meeting was in the region of $10,000. The agreement to a plan in the meeting was vague, and the follow-up was superficial as a result. The cost of agreeing a key account programme process would have been a couple of days’ effort, certainly less than $10,000. That documentation could be used to help make 100 account discovery workshops more effective.
The format and content of the joint account plan that is produced will depend to a large degree on how sophisticated each companies internal account planning process is.? Highly developed major account planning processes will have detailed information on the status of the account, the health of their business and the key stakeholders.? If that is the baseline, then the alliance can expect something similar to be a realistic deliverable of the joint planning process.? Indeed for there to be a well prepared three way conversation between the client and the PS firm and the tech firm a joint account plan is essential, even if its just a couple of pages.
The example above is a version of the most developed mapping the authors have seen to illustrate relationships within an client as part of a joint account plan. It depicts the formal organisational hierarchy, names and roles of the key stakeholders. The Social Styles1 indicator is very useful to give a view on the personality characteristics of each person, so they can be effectively mapped to complementary people from the alliance. The ‘sentiment’ indicator notes how they feel about the alliance and/or one of the tech or PS firm to help navigate how to approach them. Relationship owners are also illustrated to indicate who knows them best. Any professional organisation will have something similar in an account plan for an important customer, and whilst that will be confidential, if they saw value they could choose to share the less sensitive content. The trick to creating a combined one for the alliance is building enough trust to share it and willingness to invest time to turn it into a joint version.
To pick up on the personality characteristics point, if you believe that understanding stakeholders’ personality type is a useful part of planning how to position ideas in a relevant context, the Tracom Social Styles is a very useful tool. There is a graphic summary of the model below and you can visit https:// tracom.com/to learn more.
Wrapping up this section on the key account plan, we summarise by saying that whilst the PS and tech firms are sure to have their own account planning and opportunity management process, the alliance will need its own version of them for a joint team to follow. A modest amount of thinking about how to get the account teams to collaborate upfront will pay dividends later on when the process and templates are reused multiple times.
Do you agree that cultural alignment, account planning and goal alignment are ‘permanent conversations’?? Are there others?
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Hypergrowth | alliances | MBA | author
7 个月Thanks to Sean Essex and TRACOM Group for the 'social styles' model for account planning, very valuable
EMEIA Alliance Director at EY
7 个月Leadership alignment in priority account selection is perhaps the only tag I’d make to this. If you seek to pick a Top 10, entrenching Leadership in the review and execution thereof gives rigour to the exercise of selection