{"id":5184,"date":"2023-02-02T10:00:54","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T18:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=5184"},"modified":"2023-01-20T14:13:46","modified_gmt":"2023-01-20T22:13:46","slug":"is-your-strategic-partnership-just-a-press-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=5184","title":{"rendered":"Is your strategic partnership just a glorified press release?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celebrating that strategic partnership<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many of us make it a priority to find and partner with companies that can add to our\"\" offering or extend our reach.\u00a0 And we rightly celebrate each such pairing, often with a mutual press release.<\/p>\n

And sometimes that\u2019s all we end up doing.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Call it a \u201cpress release partnership.\u201d\u00a0 Or an opportunity missed.\u00a0 Or a relationship not nurtured.\u00a0\u00a0Finding a supplier, distributor or other partner is the easiest part.\u00a0 Carefully planning the mutual activities to move toward a stated goal is something else. \u00a0\u00a0It takes real effort and planning on both sides of a partnership between companies to make it work.<\/p>\n

But wait! Is it that simple?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Depending upon the size of the companies and complexity of the products or services involved, it is fair to assume that you\u2019ll need to dedicate a resource to this effort, sometimes a full-time resource at that.\u00a0 Consider a sales relationship where your product will be in the bag of salespeople from the partner company.\u00a0 After an initial focus, perhaps during an introductory meeting or training session, the salespeople hit the road.<\/p>\n

Why it often fails:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Email readers, continue here…]\u00a0<\/em><\/span> \u00a0And that\u2019s the last you often hear about their promotion of your product \u2013 because they are commissioned upon their own company\u2019s products and measured by the success of those sales, not yours.\u00a0 Yet, the partnership was intended to help their people sell their products by enhancing or completing their line.\u00a0 Why would this partnership \u2013 one that benefits both companies \u2013 fail to succeed?<\/p>\n

Who is responsible for strategic partnership success?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"In spite of the best efforts of senior management in creating such a partnership, the success always lies in the hands of those closest to the end customer.\u00a0 The only way to assure continued success in such a relationship is to permit those in sales to be in direct contact with their counterparts in the other company, something often discouraged by sales management from the selling organization as a distraction from achievement of quota for both the salesperson and manager.<\/p>\n

And back full circle<\/strong><\/p>\n

Which brings us back to senior management and the original reason such a partnership was created in the first place.\u00a0 Such a partnership requires much more than a general agreement at top levels.\u00a0 Consideration of pricing strategy, mutual compensation, training of salespersons, creation of custom collateral material, availability of technical sales support, continued contact between sales counterparts, access to those who act as technical liaisons to sales, and updates to the field of changes and enhancements are all components of a successful partnership.<\/p>\n

None of those components are easy or cheap.\u00a0 Without a plan, these partnerships usually end up merely as press release partnerships, fading into the sunset shortly after announcement.\u00a0\u00a0 Do you recognize the symptoms?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Celebrating that strategic partnership Many of us make it a priority to find and partner with companies that can add to our offering or extend our reach.\u00a0 And we rightly celebrate each such pairing, often with a mutual press release. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depending-upon-others","category-surrounding-yourself-with-talent"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}