Given the velocity of change in today’s market conditions, companies are hard-pressed to stay ahead of evolving trends.  If an alliance strategy is not part of your overall strategy, then your long-term success is in peril.  Oh sure, you might have a few bursts of growth, but long-term:  you will probably fail.

Alliances should be an integral part of your business strategy because of the incremental opportunity that they represent.  When crafted correctly, they grow the market for everyone and strengthen your value chain.  The key to an effective alliance is growth.  You want to make sure your partnership will make the whole pie bigger by enabling access to new or adjacent markets, rather than divide a non-growing pie further.

The fact is that no one company can be all things to all markets – you can’t do it all.  Further, not meeting market requirements often means ceding a large part of the marketshare to a sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker but more focused competitor.  Alliances can help you hit critical market windows and offset marketshare attrition.  Here are a few tips to get you started along the path of alliance success:

1. Develop a coherent strategy that identifies how/where a partnership will contribute to business goals.
2. Identify potential partners who can fulfill the needs identified in your strategy.
3. Define the short and long-term wins for everyone involved.
4. Stay focused on the big picture and negotiate a win-win agreement.
5. Construct and manage each partnership as a business.
6. Think about creating incremental value, not just getting a fatter slice of pie – this, after all, is not real growth.
7. Develop a playbook:  Build a repeatable model based on best practices and sound strategy to improve success rates.
8. Hire the right people:  First rate people skills are a must.  Invest in their continued training and development.
9. Leverage alliances to focus on doing what you do best and what is core to the long-term health of your company.
10. Work to develop and maintain trust which can take years to build but can be destroyed with just 1 wrong move.

Have additional insight about building relationships and establishing alliances?  Let us know about them in the comments.

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