http://www.phoenixcg.comLatest headlines from Phoenix Consulting Group http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/sucessful_negotiations.htm 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/.htm Great meeting last night: Changing the Game: The Age of the Platform Meets the 24-hour Customer  produced by the California Chapter... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/alliance_stakeholder_alignment.htm 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/a_perfect_storm_for_alliances.htm Non-traditional partners to pursue innovative opportuntiesI 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/beforethebrand.htm 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/asapsvsms2011.htm 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/alliance_performance.htm Alliance Management Practices: Performers and UnderperformersAll 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/dashboards.htm This Blog Contributed byMonica David, Vice President, North America, CustomerImpactWhat 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/culture-of-collaboration.htm 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, --... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/professionaldevelopmentjuly.htm 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/sustainablevaluepropositionspart2.htm 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnervalueprops.htm Building Win‐Win‐Win Value Propositions: The Key to Sustainable Partnershipsby Norma Watenpaugh, Principal, PhoenixCG... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/apc-ciscodcof.htm The Participation of APC by Schneider Electric in the Cisco Data Center of the FutureBy Kim Tremblay, Marketing Director, WW Strategic Alliances, APC by Schneider Electric Listen up alliance marketing has arrived.In 2009 the tables turned.  Traditionally... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/collaborativesellingpart1.htm Part 1: The Squeeze PlayIve 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/stakeholder_alignment.htm 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.  http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/collaboration_philosophy.htm 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/the-nature-of-trust.htm 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/creating-value-from-innovation-and-the-role-of-alliances.htm 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/collaborative-capability.htm Certification assures Collaborative Capability: Taking Partnering to the Next LevelI 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/social-media-at-your-service.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/alliance-strategy/managing-communities-and-ecosystems-with-social-media.html Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting Group, June 2009Social media is gaining presence within partner ecosystemsThese are natural communities and naturally lend themselves to these media.There has been a trend for some time by large... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/alliance-strategy/is-social-media-crossing-the-chasm-in-partner-management.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/ecosystem-optimization/social-media-and-partnering.htm 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnering/social-media-and-partnering.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnering/how-are-partner-managers-using-social-media.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/alliance-strategy/two-new-emerging-best-practices-in-alliance-management.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnering/serving-our-customers-thru-better-partnering-doing-more-with-less.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/strategic-alliances/the-power-of-green-alliances.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/strategic-alliances/the-roi-of-loyalty-part-ii.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/ecosystem-optimization/the-roi-of-loyalty-part-i.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/strategic-alliances/alliances-reading-list.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnering/alliance-strategy-in-challenging-times-rebalancing-the-portfolio.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/strategic-alliances/alliances-in-the-news.html Plans for Strategic Alliances on the RiseNearly 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 CoopersNEW YORK, Dec 4, 2008 http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnering/realignment-finding-opportunity.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/strategic-alliances/more-now-than-ever.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/alliance-strategy/driving-growth-alliances.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/coopetition.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/strategic-alliances/collaborative-innovation-partnerships.html "Collaborative Innovation: Leveraging Strategic Partnerships for the Global Playing Field" Sunday, March 30, 2008BlogTalkRadio: www.BlogTalkRadio.com/CoachforInnovation... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/strategic-alliances/secret-4-success-at-top.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnering/secret-2-build.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnering/where-alliances-should-report.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnering/secret-1-winners-collaborate.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/alliance-management-certification/partner-manager-certification.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnering/eight-secrets-update.html 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... http://www.phoenixcg.com/blog/partnering/pheathers-flying.html 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...