How can you build and maintain long-term collaborative partnerships?

Its essential to identify what type of partnership you need, this will directly affect KPIs, the process for identifying, recruiting and executing the partnership. For example a marketing automation platform might have: * Technology Partners - technologies that feed or are fed by the data the use cases executed by the platform generate. * Introduction partners - partners who have a relationship with the ICP, a reason to collaborate and minimal overlap in offerings. * Channel partners - those who already sell to the ICP and could also sell in your services on your behalf. The ecosystem is complex, clarity on value creation, addressable market are the drivers of how much should be invested on both sides to make this work.

Em cada parceria, uma dinâmica de troca se estabelece, permeada por diversos valores, como o financeiro, conteúdo, mão de obra, inteligência aplicada, projeção, entre outros. É crucial ter clareza sobre o valor específico que você contribui para o contexto ou parceiro em questão. Iniciar essa parceria com uma entrega significativa de valor estabelece um padrão positivo, criando uma espiral ascendente de trocas benéficas a longo prazo. Esse compromisso inicial não apenas fortalece a relação, mas também promove uma cultura de colaboração baseada em reciprocidade, essencial para o crescimento sustentável da parceria.

To build and maintain long-term collaborative partnerships, it's essential to focus on evolution and growth. Here's how I approach it: 1-Identify growth areas: start by understanding what growth means to you. Identify areas that inspire you now and those that might in the future. 2-Openness and sharing: Be prepared to share your growth aspirations with others. This sharing often leads to discovering common interests, areas where you can help each other, and where mutual growth is possible. 3-Foster healthy collaboration: If you find common ground, you can start building a partnership based on mutual support and growth.

Make sure you give time towards the GTM element of the partnership. What problems does it solve? How do we know people will pay ( enough) to solve them? How much do we need to invest to make sure the solution is robust? Will it make our core deals go faster / larger? How will we communicate the proposition? What would happen if we did not do this? Sometimes brands go out and say " hey lets get lots of partners and own the ecosystem", without doing due diligence, then months later are bogged down with a solution that does not meet the above criteria. When the due diligence pays off most organisations will align role and responsibilities well, from a position of real knowledge. That said always have a dedicated partner manager!

Overall partnerships have become so en vogue that its not uncommon to see businesses with '00s if not '000s of partner logos on their website eg ecommerce platforms, payment providers etc. In some cases that makes sense - your product is ubiquitous and you want to work with the whole market. In most cases it is better to narrow your focus to a small number of super active, highly embedded aligned partners where you have the time to manage the relationship, can show true synergy demonstrate joint value creation.

Reflect on what Long-term means to you and if this is what you need. Long-term collaborations move beyond transactional interactions, like "selling an apple," which has immediate but fleeting value. Instead, think in terms of "selling/building an apple land" or "sharing/growing skills to nurture apples." It's about creating something sustainable and evolving that benefits this partnership. Think about this: do you need to sell an apple today, or do you need to invest in land or skills together that can yield a variety of fruits over time? This thinking can reflect the essence of long-term partnerships – they're about building and nurturing together for sustained, mutual growth.