Are you missing an opportunity to move your business forward faster and smarter? Did you know that over 25% of the revenue of the top 2,000 US and European firms comes from strategic alliances? And that number is it expected to grow to 35% in 2 years. How does your firm stack up? While there are many types and purposes for strategic alliances, this column is focused on choosing strategic alliance partners that drive sales.

Developing Your Partnership Strategy: A Key Questions Approach

1. Assess your partnership readiness.
Determine if this approach is right for your company. Key questions:

• Are you willing to refer your customers to someone else?
• Will you be respectful when someone else's customers are referred to you?
• Can you provide a distinct advantage to an alliance partner?
• Do you have an internal executive sponsor for a strategic alliance program?
• Are you ready to have a commitment of resources and a sense of urgency to drive your own and your partners' alliance goals? How much effort and resources can you commit?
• Do you have expertise in strategic alliances and, if not, how would you get it?

2. Align with your business strategy.
Using your company's strategy and objectives, identify where partnerships can provide value. Key questions:

• How will a partnership strategy contribute to your business strategy? What are you trying to achieve? How might an alliance best serve your clients?
• What new value can be created with a partner? Does it fit with your business strategy?
• What are your targets and opportunities? Where can partnerships contribute?
• What new area do you want to get in to, and who can help you do it?
• What is the alliance strategy of your competitors? What ca you learn from them?
• If you had to leave your company and join a competitor, where would you attack your current company? Can an alliance reduce that vulnerability?

3. Determine your overall alliance approach.
Is it to:

• Directly drive sales leads?
  Key questions:
  • What is the marketing and sales process for your company? Where could alliance partners contribute in each step?
  • What triggers a sale of your products or services? Who is involved with the client at that point and prior to it?
  • What does the sale or use of your company's products or services trigger? Are other products and services consumed with your offerings?
  • Take a look at the overall activities of your buyer. Who else is involved with them or their manager in any capacity? Who is serving your target customers, and how?

• Create a broader portfolio of products and services?
  Key questions:
  • What products or services would make you more attractive to your current and targeted customers? Can you become a 1-stop shop for them?
  • Review your competitors that have a broader offering than you currently do. Are those offerings a competitive advantage? Should you form partnerships across that offering spectrum? Who are they allied with? Should you consider them? What network of relationships would vanquish them?

• Form a new offering?
  Key questions:
  • Where is your market moving? What alliances will help you get there first?
  • Is there a network of relationships that can provide a new offering?

4. Create Partner Evaluation Criteria.
Prioritize and weight the following key questions:

• Value creation:
  Does this partnership truly add more value? Is 1 + 1 greater than 2? Is this alliance customer focused?
• Cultural fit:
  Does this potential partner's management style, values, ethics and behavior make you confident and comfortable?
• Corporate strategy:
  Does their overall strategy and objectives fit with yours? Is this partnership of strategic importance to them? How will each partner advance the strategy of the other?
• Product, service and client portfolio review:
  How does what they do and who they do it with map against yours? What are the synergies and the added value? How does this partner expand your reach, either in offerings, market or geography? Where is the overlap, and how will that be managed?
• Business partner program support:
  If the potential company has a partnership infrastructure, what support will be offered? Some offer education, software licenses, facilities, marketing campaign materials, and other benefits. What can you offer?
• Business health:
  What due diligence should be done? Are they a viable and stable organization? What is their capacity to initiate, manage and make this partnership successful? Are they a quality organization? Will your partnership strategy create an unhealthy dependence for either company?
• Executive sponsorship:
  Is the potential partner committed at the leadership level to make this successful?
• Learning opportunity:
  What will you have the opportunity to learn through this partnership? This is not about intellectual property theft. Instead recognize that business growth is frequently tied to having a broader understanding of the world.

Sales focused alliances are truly a way to accelerate business growth. They do require strategic thinking up front to find the right partner, and execution skills and commitment to make it work. These questions can help move you forward to create a partnership strategy that will drive profitable sales. In a few years wouldn't you like 25% of your business coming from a new, leveraged source? Sounds like a smarter and faster way to approach it, but only if you do it right.