You can save a lot of time and effort by understanding the types of strategic partnerships your target(s) like. Do your research and find out - for each potential partner - what other partnerships they have. This will tell you: 1. If they similar to you. If so, how? 2. Do they provide the same win-win that your partnership will provide? 3. Do they encourage strategic partners? Or would you be the first? If you learn and understand your target's goals by reviewing the other strategic partnerships they've done, or have to date, you'll be way ahead of the game. If partnering with you will provide similar benefits, talk about how. Their ears will perk up when you tell them you can provide the same - or better - results from a strategic partnership!
One tip for landing a strategic partnership is to follow networking best practices. Instead of doing a cold outreach, try to find a common contact between you and the company and ask for a warm introduction. The reason this introduction is important is that it vouchsafes you to the company as a valuable contact. When you follow this method, you want to make sure that when you do reach out, you have a message that is tailored to the company and that you can provide value.
Your Partner in Personal & Professional Growth at AMB Consulting & Co.
Answered 3 years ago
Strategic partnerships changed the way I do business. The one tip for landing a strategic partnership is to conduct a partnership audit. Prior to establishing partnerships, you want to be sure that you evaluate your partnership potential. This audit will allow you to take an inventory of the current state of your business and determine if you are prepared and positioned to establish, secure, and retain strategic partnerships. Once you complete the audit, you will discover whether you are ready to share your vision with your ideal power powers, or if you should focus on restructuring elements of your business. If it's the latter, concentrate on nurturing the relationship with your prospective partner before you try to pitch. If you're ready to make a lasting impact with strategic partnerships, grab this guide: https://amargotblair.ck.page/partnershipguide.
In order to build our partner marketplace, we needed to get strategic partnerships set-up with companies that were much bigger and more established than we were. We learned early on that going to each of those companies and explaining our hypothetical value prop was far less effective than coming to those companies with a real-life example of our value. We help businesses shop for the right HR software platforms and coming to the HR software vendors with actual live customers that were interested in their platform helped to grease the wheels internally and move partnership conversations around significantly faster
When looking to partner with another company, it’s important to remember that you are looking for a relationship, not just a transaction. That means you should be looking for a company that has similar values and goals as your own. You should also be willing to make concessions in order to make the partnership work. Of course you don't want to make unlimited concessions just to make the deal work. In my first company, WriteLab, we formed several strategic partnerships with companies in Asia, licensing our technology to power their products. Aside from visiting and spending time with them, we focused on developing an objective set of criteria we believed would help us facilitate our negotiations. In this way, we could negotiate on the merits and not succumb to tactics of positional bargaining or appeals to relative power. By negotiating on objective standards of value, price, and access, not only were the deals much easier to close, but both parties felt they got a good deal.
One tip for landing an effective strategic partnership is to find other businesses who serve the same clients or customers as you, but not in a way that overlaps with what you offer. The two businesses need to be complimentary, but not directly competing. This is the sweet spot. As an example our email agency here at Ecommerce Intelligence tries to partner with other agencies, consultants, and service providers who work with Ecommerce brands like we do - but don't sell our main service. Companies selling services such as SEO, content marketing, or Google ads are great potential partners for us. It would make sense to recommend each other's services to our respective client bases. It is also a good idea to make sure any potential partner does not have immediate plans to expand their offering in a way which would compete with you directly. Ryan Turner Founder, Ecommerce Intelligence https://www.ecommerceintelligence.com/email-marketing-agency/
Confidence remains one of the most attractive traits in general and can play a major role in securing a promising collaborator. If you want to land a strategic partnership that will be a golden ticket to join the industry's top dogs, own your ideas and show that you have full confidence in their potential. Add to that a bit of charisma and you will undoubtedly catch the attention of potential strategic partners.
Landing a mutually lucrative strategic partnership is only possible if you make a genuine connection with the other party. Otherwise, everything is extremely transactional. What really helped me was building my personal brand on LinkedIn and connecting with other professionals, some of which are now my most valued partners. We often forget that we work with people, not companies, and tend to look at partnerships solely through the lens of gaining, but at the end of the day, those decision-makers are still humans and still want to feel an actual connection with their strategic partners. The beauty of social media is that we can stay connected and top of mind by creating valuable content and offering actionable advice publicly, which definitely played a huge part in all of our partnerships.
Landing a strategic partnership may be difficult for you if you don't know what you want out of it. So, I recommend you first clearly define your business goal before going for a partnership. You need to keep in mind, what exactly are you trying to accomplish. Every successful enterprise looks for a partner that can help their business enter a new market, increase sales in an existing market, obtain financial or human capital, and improve access to technology. Further, define each point of your goal clearly about what you want to achieve from it. And ready to give as much as you want in return. Plus, make a deal with a partner who has the capacity to move full steam ahead.
You may be in synergistic industries, but a strategic partnership has to begin with shared core values. Much like personal relationships, there will always be differences between businesses, but if there are not enough shared goals, visions, or values, then any long term partnership can be doomed to fail no matter how promising it may look on paper. Therefore, when looking to partner with other businesses to enhance your offering to clients, really get to know the solutions in which your customers place their trust, as well as the competitive landscape to ensure they’re working with the best options available. In doing so, you will acquire the valuable information you need to identify businesses that share your core values, and build a partnership that benefits both you and your customers.
To land a strategic partnership, ensuring that your initial outreach pitch is hyper-targeted to your future partner's interests is important. If you reach out with a generic pitch that isn't targeted to the potential partner, they are less likely to be interested. But if you can provide specific detail on why a partnership makes sense, your interest will soar. Most companies only have a few high-value strategic partnerships, so sending the right message to ideal prospects is essential.
Showcasing your product in action is one of the best ways to landing a strategic partnership. When a potential partner can see how your product is being used, they'll be able to better understand its value. In addition, seeing your product in action will give them a taste of what it's like to work with you and your team. If they like what they see, they'll be more likely to want to collaborate with you on future projects. So if you're looking to land a strategic partnership, make sure to put your product front and center. Show them how it's being used and let them experience its value for themselves. With a little hard work and some luck, you should be able to secure the partnership you're after.
Getting the attention of a potential strategic partner is really hard. That's why you need to start with "what's in it for them". A partnership should benefit both sides but the other company doesn't care how you benefit from the partnership, they only care about how they benefit. With the last SaaS company I sold, I wanted to start offering add on services on the backend of the software as an up-sell. I didn't have the infrastructure to fulfill those services in house so I reached out to a few companies as potential partners. In order for our partnership to work they were going to have to give me big discounts on their services that I could mark up to my users. Of course I didn't lead with that, I talked to them about how I had a bunch of users that were looking for their services and I was trying to find the right partner who could help my users out. This would be a huge revenue boost for them. Obviously this approach got the attention of every company I reached out to.
It can be tempting, when you're looking for a strategic partnership, to go to the biggest company and solicit their services. They have thousands of people and millions in profit, they must be the best option, right? Unfortunately, it's often not the right choice. Small to medium sized businesses are a blip on the radar for these Enterprises, so you will find yourself talking to a junior person or team, without the benefits of a tailored approach. When you partner with a company that is smaller, you're more likely get an agile team of experienced strategists who have your best interests at heart, and who can adjust their approach to suit your needs. Bigger is not always better.
Strategic partnerships come down to being as present as possible so you remain top of mind, just like in customer marketing and business development. Doing the work before they ask for it helps make it harder for a partner to say no to working with you. Build the sales enablement resources they need in different variations and formats. Proactively seek out event activation timelines or offer account introductions to those in their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) to show you would put in more work on your end of the partnership. Being proactive and present are great ways to show a partner they should trust and work with you.
Often, people will pursue a partnership that heavily benefits their own company. If you want to land a strategic partnership, developing a compelling offer that brings genuine value to the company you're interested in collaborating with is critical.
Having a well-thought, rehearsed presentation is the best way to connect with a strategic partner. It can be so difficult to research and connect with companies that would be ideal for an alliance, so you do not want to blow your opportunity when you get a chance to sit down and talk. By knowing how your own business and complement theirs, you can emphasize this while in discussions with them.
Competitors can help each other, especially if an entire industry is getting damaged by an economic swoon or a sea change in the market. About 15 years ago, three of the biggest newspaper outlets in South Florida – The Miami Herald, The Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post – teamed up to provide the best possible news coverage they could to readers across South Florida. They used to care about getting scoops over the other or getting higher circulation numbers than the other. As newspapers were fading, they realized that working together was the best solution for their long-term survival. Outside forces were eating away at them and they wanted to make sure they weren’t accelerating their demise by competing against each other. Sometimes, that’s how markets shift. Competitors become allies in order to better position themselves as they look toward the future.
Work with brands or influencers that share the same vision in a partnership. Both parties should align on an end goal - to share a service or product with their audience and generate new consumers along the way. This ensures everyone is aligned during the duration of the campaign. However, many influencers promote brands that would be of value to their audience, so consider working with those in the same niche market for best results. These partnerships can help your company achieve its goals, so be sure to work with collaborators who can make a significant impact that align with your values.
A strategic partnership is only beneficial when the parties involved have complementary resources to contribute to each other. Here are two key factors I think make a big impact. The first is providing value upfront. Trust is important but hard to build. Offering value immediately will help you win the other parties' trust. The next element is setting clear expectations. If you’re not upfront about what you want and what you’re offering the partnership will likely fall through the cracks.