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Posted Monday, December 26, 2011 at 12:15 PM by Tom Halle

Just as an alliance is best served by strong connecting tissue and active dialog between stakeholder groups across both partners, the positive outcome of an alliance negotiation is also best served by creating similar connecting tissue – even before the alliance is executed.

It is important to remember that the negotiation is the end of the process, not the beginning – you are endeavoring to build a flexible and enduring framework for a relationship of trust that will serve the needs of two or more parties over time, and it is very important for your respective executives, line-of-business leaders, and relevant department heads to build a collective vision for the purpose, goals, and methods of the alliance BEFORE pen is put to paper to codify the relationship. 

 Said another way, the Legal department is not the first step in the process, but the last – they are best used by simply crafting mutually acceptable language to reflect a relationship that your cross-company teams have already defined.

 When this approach is used, a second benefit also accrues – not only does the contract fairly reflect the true interests of the alliance and its constituents, but those constituents are now fully aware of the nature and underpinnings of the agreement – and feel personal ownership for the success of the alliance.

 The executives to be connected across companies will vary with industry and company size – for example, in a typical large-company alliance in the ICT industry, connecting tissue should be created between CEOs or their direct reports (to establish the joint vision), sales and/or channel leaders (to establish the commercial objectives and sales operational methods), Product teams (to create the joint roadmap as appropriate), the Product/Service Delivery teams (to trace the complete path from sale to customer success), Marketing (to formulate joint positioning, messaging, and demand gen strategies and related funding expectations), and Finance (to address differences in financial operating methods and revenue recognition principles).  

 Other industries will follow different models, but all amount to the same thing – ensuring that there is clear consensus and support for a joint mission from the top, and that the operational struts of the relationship are well understood and anticipated in the resulting contract.  Drafting language and negotiating to a final agreement will then be a straightforward matter of capturing this consensus view on paper, and negotiators will have the wind at their backs as all parties will already be deeply invested in the joint vision of the alliance and will be more flexible in finding common ground in order to reach agreement. 

 Of course, there will remain the perennial issues of negotiating limitations of liability, allowances for breach and default, non-disclosure agreements , and other typical elements that reflect purely legal rather than business issues – but these areas are where your legal team likely shines, and are well versed in negotiating.

About the Author

Tom Halle, Alliances Executive with cloud infrastructure leader Savvis, is a high-tech veteran with eighteen years as a technologist and successful entrepreneur and another twelve years building high-growth commercial & technical alliances for more than 80 global ICT leaders.  Tom has negotiated scores of agreements in support of these alliances, which in turn have delivered nearly $4B in business value.

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Posted Friday, November 4, 2011 at 08:00 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Great meeting last night: Changing the Game: The Age of the Platform Meets the 24-hour Customer  produced by the California Chapter...

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Posted Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 07:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Do you have champions in your alliance? or do you have snipers and hostages? 

When I teach alliance skills mastery workshops, I often ask how much time managers spend on internal alignment.  That is winning the hearts and minds of the internal alliance stakeholders to gain their...

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Posted Friday, March 11, 2011 at 07:00 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Non-traditional partners to pursue innovative opportunties

I was asked to moderate this year's Alliance Executive Roundtable for the California Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals around the topic Cross-Sector Innovation and the Role of Alliances.   Twenty...

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Posted Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 05:30 PM by Leslie Sutherland

One of the biggest challenges of any partnering effort is to communicate your brand value to your partners and their customers.

At PhoenixCG, we promote strategies and tools that help you take control of your brand by defining what your brand is before your partners and their customers...

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Tags: brand value, positioning, messaging, partnering, value propositions, Before the Brand, Leslie Sutherland


Posted Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 10:00 AM by Leslie Sutherland

ASAP-SV/NorCal is once again bringing more value to chapter members and sponsors by offering their successful and comprehensive Alliance Management Skills Mastery Series in 2011. Each segment in the series is taught by a leading authority in alliance management, bringing participants best practices...

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Tags: Alliance Management Skills Mastery Series, ASAP


Posted Friday, November 12, 2010 at 03:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Alliance Management Practices: Performers and Underperformers

All business managers, not just those managing alliances, have been challenged with navigating a stormy economy. We had to make decisions on where to cut back, how to to make the best of diminished resources, and still...

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Posted Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 11:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

This Blog Contributed by

Monica David, Vice President, North America, CustomerImpact

What are the critical components in assessing the success of Partner Programs? Clearly, it means putting the Voice of the Partner to work. Successful partner programs need significant investments in technology...

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Tags: metrics, dashboards, partner programs, ecosystem optimization, survey, measure


Posted Monday, August 23, 2010 at 09:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Is your company partner friendly? Or is every attempt at collaboration an uphill battle? I heard one partner manager describe her partnership with one company as “hand-to-hand combat.” Another partner manager described his partner as “infested with partnering antibodies,” --...

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Posted Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 06:00 AM by Ann Trampas

When I first began my career -- fresh out of college -- I didn't have a clue about the value of professional development.  After all, I had a few degrees, a little experience, that's enough, right?

Wrong.  Oh, so wrong.

Like many alliance professionals, I worked in a variety...

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Tags: Ann Trampas, Norma Watenpaugh, CA-AM, CSAP, Professional Development, ASAP, workshops, seminars


Posted Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 12:00 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

In my last post, I talked about the "value triangle," and how it creates win-win-win value propositions for you, your partners, and customers.  Today, I'll flesh out what I mean by solution, financial, and sales and marketing value, as well as present a case example of how a global systems integrator...

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Posted Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 06:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Building Win‐Win‐Win Value Propositions: The Key to Sustainable Partnerships

by Norma Watenpaugh, Principal, PhoenixCG...

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Tags: value proposition, partner, value triangle, sustainable


Posted Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 09:00 AM by Leslie Sutherland

The Participation of APC by Schneider Electric in the Cisco Data Center of the Future

By Kim Tremblay, Marketing Director, WW Strategic Alliances, APC by Schneider Electric

 

Listen up – alliance marketing has arrived.

In 2009 the tables turned.  Traditionally...

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Tags: DCoF, Cisco, APC by Schneider Electric, Data Center of the Future, Marketing, Alliance


Posted Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 01:15 AM by Tom Halle

Part 1: The Squeeze Play

I’ve been at the strategic alliances game a long time, and in my experience the most difficult aspect of building partnerships has been facilitating successful collaborative selling between two companies.   Selling with partners is an unnatural act...

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Tags: Collaborative selling, sales, partner sales


Posted Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 12:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Aligning team members and stakeholders to support the work of an alliance or any business relationship can be surprisingly treacherous.  One would think that if the strategic intent and return on investment on an alliance is clear the rest falls into place.  Well, guess again. 

<...

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Posted Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 11:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Launching new website turned out to be much more of an involved exercise than I imagined. In this day and age, the website is the face of the company and so a new website caused us to rethink the business, the practice areas, and the positioning of PhoenixCG for the future.  Since the founding...

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Posted Saturday, February 6, 2010 at 02:28 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

I did a study three years ago of partner health across 14 strategic alliances and about ~400 respondents and found something very interesting about the nature of trust in alliances. We did a correlation of heath attributes against overall partner health. We found that when 'trust' was present it...

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Tags: Alliance Management Best Practices, Alliance Strategy


Posted Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 11:52 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Innovation takes many forms.  We often focus on innovation as technological breakthroughs and indeed those are important to fuel corporate growth.  But there are other forms of innovation which can be just as powerful and just as disruptive to the status quo in creating strategic competitive...

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Tags: alliance, Collaborative innovation, competitive strategy, innovation, partnering, partnerships, value creation


Posted Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 05:52 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Certification assures Collaborative Capability: Taking Partnering to the Next Level

I was fortunate to be featured in an interview for the Marketing Thought Leadership series with Linda Popky, Marketing Master and recently named one of Silicon Valley's Top 100 Women of Influence...

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Tags: alliances, collaboration, collaborative capability, partnering


Posted Monday, October 12, 2009 at 02:50 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

One area in which social media is gaining traction is support services.When you combine partners in an interactive forum they become a self-help community.When you add customers to the mix, your partners become very competitive in demonstrating their expertise to the customer base.The result...

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Tags: Social Media, self service communities


Posted Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 08:46 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting Group, June 2009

Social media is gaining presence within partner ecosystems

These are natural communities and naturally lend themselves to these media.There has been a trend for some time by large...

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Tags: Social media, partner ecosystem, ecosystem management, partner strategy


Posted Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 04:38 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting Group, June 2009Well, arguably yes and no. Some technologies that might be labeled early Web 2.0 were in pretty widespread usage. Others such as Twitter are caught up in the tornado. Some, such as MySpace, already seem...

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Tags: social media, partner marketing, ecosystem management, partner ecosystems


Posted Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Social media hype is everywhere. We are deluged with it on-line. We see it on TV. Our kids are absorbed by Facebook. The State department even requests that Twitter delays maintenance to ensure continuity in the information flow from civil unrest in Iran. Even as we are coming to grips with Social...

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Tags: social media, partnering


Posted Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 09:14 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting GroupOf the 20 partner managers we interviewed, most were realizing productive benefits from the use of social media. Benefits were described in terms of strengthening relationships versus the hard metrics of generating...

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Tags: social media benefits, partner strategy, enhancing collaboration, partner ecosystem


Posted Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 10:19 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting GroupWe asked twenty partner managers What is social media?

By far the most common response was Good Question! After a thoughtful pause, we heard social media were tools that enabled users to communicate, to...

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Tags: Social Media, Partnering, Partner Ecosystem, Collaboration


Posted Saturday, July 4, 2009 at 12:23 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

The ASAP 2009 State of Alliance Management Report looked at thirty-six commonly recognized best practices of alliance management and benchmarked them across the community of respondents representing 431 companies. This year the researchers looked a bit deeper into innovation alliances and identified...

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Tags: emerging, best practices, alliance, management


Posted Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 06:25 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Certainly in this economy doing more with less is an imperative we all face. It is also the fundamental premise of partnering and in these times Partner Managers are pressed even harder to do even more with even less. A few weeks ago I was asked to moderate a gathering of senior alliance executives...

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Tags: customer service, resource management, optimization


Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 02:32 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Attended an ASAP Green breakfast this morning and it was certainly eye opening even if the coffee arrived late.

Hal LaFlash, Dir Emerging Clean Technology Policyfrom PG&E -that's Pacific Gas and Electric for the non-Californians - spoke on the many alliances that PG&E has been...

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Tags: power, green, alliances


Posted Monday, May 11, 2009 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Part I discussed how demographic segmentation allowedtargeting programs, benefits, and attention to engender greater loyalty and business through their developers. Part II addresseshow segmentation by 'Loyalty' itself helps to identify andto address specific concerns of developers. While...

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Tags: roi, loyalty


Posted Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

I was approached by a client some weeks ago to present at conference some work we did on Developer Loyalty. Now there are a lot satisfaction type surveys out there, but my client presented a very specific challenge. She was new in the role as the Director of the Developer Community and...

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Tags: roi, loyalty


Posted Monday, January 5, 2009 at 03:09 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Have you read a book in the past year that made an impact on you and how you manage alliances and partnerships? Could even be one you've written!! Here are some that I read this past year which I found had relevance to the field of alliance management. NOT listed in any order other than how they...

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Tags: alliances, reading, list


Posted Monday, December 15, 2008 at 10:18 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Is it time to reevaluate your alliance investment? Do you have the right partners to weather the economic climate?

Are you retaining the right partners to ensure you have a strategic advantage when the thaw comes?

Regular portfolio rebalancing is a best practice even in good times...

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Tags: alliance, strategy, challenging, times, rebalancing, portfolio


Posted Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 08:32 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Plans for Strategic Alliances on the Rise

Nearly one-third of consumer products companies plan to forge new strategic alliances in the upcoming 12 months (30 percent), up 8 points from the second quarter of 2008 according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers

NEW YORK, Dec 4, 2008» View Full Post and Leave Feedback

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Posted Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 09:44 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Have you rethought your alliance strategy in terms of what new opportunities lie ahead? Are you prepared to find the opportunity in disruption? We can assume that business as usual is not going to work in today's volatile economic climate because business has become unusual. Yet, disruptive...

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Tags: strategy, realignment, opportunity


Posted Monday, October 13, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

Strategic alliances are often viewed as a strategy for growth and perhaps not always a strategy for economically challenging times. But many of the reasons that make strategic alliances a good idea in good times make them an even better strategy for uncertain times. What are these reasons to partner...

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Tags: strategic alliances, importance


Posted Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

What do you think of, when you think win-win? Most business people will interpret that as "I win and my partner wins". Unfortunately quite a number will behave differently: "win-win means I win twice!" This, as you can imagine, does not produce sustainable partnerships. Smart business people will...

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Tags: partnering, growth


Posted Friday, April 25, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

The April meeting of the Silicon Valley/Norcal Chapter of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals featured a panel discussion on Coopetition. It turns out to be as hard to pronounce as it is to do. The panel often...

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Tags: alliances, cooperation, competition


Posted Friday, March 28, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

"Collaborative Innovation: Leveraging Strategic Partnerships for the Global Playing Field" Sunday, March 30, 2008BlogTalkRadio: www.BlogTalkRadio.com/CoachforInnovation...

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Tags: partnering, innovation


Posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

A successful alliance program begins at the top with the support of the CEO. Like many other things, the CEO influences company culture, models the behavior, and sets the priorities in collaborative relationships. CEO support and that of the CXO staff fosters the environment where alliances can...

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Tags: partnering, success, alliances, secrets


Posted Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 09:14 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Does your organization have a clear discipline in determining which strategy to pursue to achieve an objective? Build? Buy? or Partner?

If you answered, NO - you are in the majority. Unfortunately. A few organizations do, however, and one Proctor & Gamble has had excellent results...

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Tags: partnering, build


Posted Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 07:16 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

This is a question I am frequently asked and one for continual debate. As far as I know there is very little published work on this topic, only fleeting references on the challenge. My opinion: there is no perfect answer but the best answer relates to what are you trying optimize?

Functional...

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Tags: partnering, reporting


Posted Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at 07:49 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

In the Eight Secrets webcast, we reviewed some research data indicating that higher performing companies were extensive collaborators.

Here I'd like to share some thoughts behind a fundamental change in attitude towards collaboration and partnering that I've seen in past few years. Some...

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Tags: partnering, collaboration


Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 at 07:53 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

One of the major efforts I have been part of this past six months is developing a certification exam for alliance professionals for the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. Consumed, may be a better description of the time and effort that has gone into this initiative. The alliance with...

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Tags: partner management, certification


Posted Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 06:36 PM by Norma Watenpaugh

With great relief, I can report the "Eight Secrets" webcast went well. The producer and technical staff at AMA made it easy. The producer commented it was well attended and one of the best received webcasts they have done in terms of the feedback survey results. Whew! Here is one of the viewer...

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Tags: partnering, webcast


Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 at 10:29 AM by Norma Watenpaugh

Launching a blog for Phoenix Consulting Group in the midst of Pottermania has been a hoot, to steal a phrase from Hedwig. Looking for a blog name, I investigated everything Phoenix and found everything Harry Potter. Trying to get clever, I tried the current spelling Phoenix Pheathers which...

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Tags: blog, business development, interation, collaboration

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