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How to find and select alliance partners

Contents

Finding an alliance partner1

Selecting an alliance partner 2

Qualities to look in an alliance partner 3

Credentials of your future alliance partner4

Finding an alliance partner

“You can only partner with someone or an organization that wants to partner”

Finding an alliance partner

Where to find great alliance partner

Supplier - they know a lot about competitor and can give you a different perspective of how what other business people do

Customer - customers have most likely done some business with the person or company that you are seeking.

Professional or trade association - the director of trade association would know a lot about your competitor or potential supplier.

Finding an alliance partner

Newspapers and trade magazine - newspaper and trade magazine allows you to know about the status of other business.

Local successful business people - you can find them at the seminars, commerce activity and learn more from them

Internet - accessible source

Selecting an alliance partner

• Identify partner core value

• The more your interest overlap the more successful alliance

• First you can work with them on small project

Selecting an alliance partner

There are 4 ways to build trust and create an environment where all partners are comfortable with each other.

1. Reinforce good behavior with your partner2. Breakdown communication barrier3. Use evaluation form to evaluate the relationship4. Be a role model and set an example

Trust

Selecting an alliance partner

• For an alliance to work, everyone must be tolerant with each other.

• You have to be a good listener and accept idea of other people even if you might not agree with them.

Tolerance

Selecting an alliance partner

• Today, most businesses want to grow, and that is the important reason for developing strategic alliances.

• Success is possible through an attitude of cooperation.

• Kindness leads to cooperation and cooperation creates an environment for growth.

Cooperation

Selecting an alliance partner

• Caring enough about your strategic alliance is necessary for making a commitment.

• This element allows each partner in an alliance to feel that they will be heard and will be reasonably safe from criticism.

Commitment

Selecting an alliance partner

• A strategic alliance must be an institution where individuals, organizations, and companies come together to develop a relationship of trust, tolerance, cooperation, commitment, and mutuality.

• Each alliance partner must have the desire to win so that you now have the foundation for successful strategic alliances.

• These alliances will form the framework for marketing campaign and business strategy based on a mutually equitable relationship.

• Mutuality is the must have ingredient in a successful partnering alliance.

Mutuality

Qualities to look in an alliance partner

1.Your partner wants to win.

Pick a partner who is already a winner. Both you and your partner must have a desire to win, to want to do better, and to be useful in creating only what will be valuable for both of them.

2.Your partner must understand that they are ultimately responsible for their own success.

You have to know that whether partnering is or is not the best choice for a situation. Don’t always assume that your partner is looking out for your interest. Both of you are human and it is the human instinct that seeking for their own interest first.

Qualities to look in an alliance partner

3.Your partner must be an active listener.

Active listening is a critical skill in business alliance. This helps you to know what you need to do and when your partner is falling behind in their commitment. Hence, alertness from both sides equals mutual success.

4.Your partner must understand and care about what drives your business.

Because successful partnering is about synergies, you must give and receive additional value. The way to add value is you have to understand the needs and goals of your partner.

Qualities to look in an alliance partner

5. Your partner must respond to, and act on, feedback.

The only possibility for a forward and beneficial movement in any organization is with leaders who are willing to accept council.

6. Your partner must be flexible, especially when events or circumstances are not what were expected.

Flexibility is absolutely necessary because things will never turn out exactly as we expect. Therefore, partners must stay flexible enough in order to evolve the relationships.

Qualities to look in an alliance partner

7. Your partner must be trusting, trustworthy, and with integrity, respecting all with whom they come in contact.

You can’t always be looking over your shoulder in an alliance relationship, therefore, partnering with people who are trusting and trustworthy stops you from worrying.

8. Your partners seeks win/win arrangements and solutions.

You must win for the sake of your organization and your partner must do the same. You want a partner that is interested in making the pie bigger, so that everybody gets more.

Qualities to look in an alliance partner

9. Your partner must understand that partnering is a relationship of interdependence.

Imagine your partner and yourself as two overlapping circles. The parts that overlap are your area or mutual interest and value. This overlapping area is your area of interdependence.

10. You and your partner must have great chemistry.

If both people or organizations achieve many of the previous qualities and have good chemistry, then it will results to an unstoppable alliance.

Credentials of your future alliance partner

• The ability to do and produce what your partner perceives you can through skills, technology and relationship.

When a partner can not deliver what is promised, alliance agreements will depreciate in value.

• Have something new to bring to the party.

Allows you to increase your penetration within a limited local market.

Credentials of your future alliance partner

• Having the financial ability to stay-the-course.

If your alliance partner has the means to continually contribute their agreed share, you are guarantee to have continuous success.

• Cultural compatibility.

operates from integrity and is willing to challenge existing corporate paradigms.

• Complimentary core strengths.

allows partners to benchmark the overlapping capabilities.

Credentials of your future alliance partner

• The ability to think strategically and tactically.

There are 3 relationship realities. These realities will have a powerful effect, good or bad, on the success of your alliance relationship.

People do not change after marriage!

What you see is what you get!

You deserve the partner you select!

Additional advice

• Knowing who your partners are is very important.

• Try visiting your potential partner at their place of business.

• But do it in an unusual way by set up an appointment to visit on Tuesday

but show up on Monday, which is a day earlier to leave them unprepared.

• If they are not willing to let you look around, you can assume that your

partner is hiding something from you.

• The objective is that you want to catch your potential alliance partner in

their real life, not with the special face they put on for you.

• Because knowing who your partner really is can eliminate the need for

conflict resolution and exit agreement.

Conclusion

If you know what you have to offer an alliance partner and

what you want from an alliance, you have discovered

“purpose”. When you have a purpose in developing a

strategic alliance, your plan will appear automatically and

success is within your reach.

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How to find and select alliance partners