Partnering
For Success: Maximizing Your Consulting Potential Through Partners
by Melinda Moses, Principal of MSM Strategic Marketing
Overview
There are excellent reasons why we have become independent consultants: we wanted to, we had to, or we wanted to be more in control of our lives, our achievements, our fortunes, and our success. We are successful as consultants because we provide a product or service that is in demand, and there is something special about us that enables us to get business from those products or services.
Likewise, there are extremely compelling reasons why we should, as consultants, create partnerships with others. The most successful consultants strive to improve their business through creative strategies and services, and adding partnering to this is a very practical, straightforward way to continue to evolve.
For those of you who already reap the benefits of partnering, congratulations! For those of you who haven’t tried, rest assured that it’s not as hard as you think! The benefits of partnering, even taking a few small steps, greatly outweighs the result of being complacent. The challenge? To know your business, your resources, and your goals, and to pursue partnering opportunities that help you achieve those goals without stretching your resources.
As with consulting in general, creating or leveraging partnerships requires a number of things if you are to be successful:
- Goals -- knowing what you want for your business, and using partners to help achieve them
- Knowledge -- knowing how to go about generating a partner-oriented plan, and then getting results from that plan
- People – knowing people who can help you, and tapping into that network to help you achieve your goals
- Guts – knowing that change is hard, but going forward anyway
Fortunately there are some simple things you can do to get started. Or to at to least start thinking about.
A Few Easy Ways To Get Started
Partnering is more of a frame of mind than an art form. It’s not rocket science either. It just takes a little bit of effort to get big rewards! Here are some things I recommend for everyone:
Create a “Professional Reference” section on your website.
This is a great vehicle for promoting other professionals (and vice versa) who you regularly do business with and/or highly recommend. Don’t forget their contact information and perhaps a downloadable document or link to their information. Think of what you’d need to know before you called a stranger for help, and put it there! It really helps drive business, and that’s what partnering is all about.
Ask your professional partners to reciprocate!
Provide your colleagues with your own information to include on their own site, and explain why it’s such a great idea. This way, you’ve made the first move, provided a benefit to them that’s hard to resist, and given them what they need to do the job for you. All they have to do is put it on their site … you’ve already done the work for them.
Give partners your business cards and other tools so they can promote
you more effectively to others.
Brochures, hand-out presentations, even a CD with a demo on it that allows them to promote your services and makes you look great. Make sure everything you provide clearly displays who you are, what you do, and how to reach you. Get their info in return so you can help promote them.
Set up simple “teaching” sessions.
Nothing too complicated – even over lunch or a cup of coffee – that helps you to define and understand the value of each other’s products and services, and the synergies between the two.
Reward each other for your efforts.
So Why Partner?
- We can’t always do all of the work ourselves; we need reliable
people to share the work with.
How many times have you been stuck doing something that makes you
miserable only because you can’t say “no” to an opportunity?? It
might be that you are great at most facets of your work, but others
are more qualified for a small part of it. For example, I often help
companies understand how to better promote themselves to and through
their partners, create a plan, and then work with them to execute
this plan. If the goal is to enable the channel to help them sell,
then I provide them (the channel) with tools – maybe collateral,
perhaps a self-running, interactive demo, perhaps an event plan to
increase exposure. I can create all of these tools myself, but it’s
not my forte. But I might prefer to provide the project management,
vision and guidance to another person who is better skilled in
executing these things.
It’s hard to admit that you can’t do everything, and it takes a very
wise (or very frustrated) person to accept that! But at the end of
the day, focusing on your strengths and using your time wisely, even
if it means giving up a portion of our potential revenue to get a job
done quickly and well, is definitely the right thing to do. [It’s
also a great relief to find a partner who loves to do the part that
you hate, and vice versa.]
- Working with selling partners increases the number of people
selling your products and services, and provides access to more
prospects than could ever be reached on your own.
Easy to say, harder to do. Nobody understands your product or service as well as you do. But no matter how big your business is, your growth potential is finite if you go it alone. People can learn what they need from you to help you grow.
- Use Selling and Distribution Partners to package and resell your products and services. This might take the form of an OEM arrangement where components are bundled into something larger and sold as part of that larger piece. Or convincing an ISV or integrator that it’s in their best interest to sell your product directly instead of bringing you in on every deal. Typically a licensing/royalty arrangement works best in these scenarios.
- Work with industry- or application-specific partners to gain access to new markets that you are not equipped to handle on your own. By partnering with other developers and service providers you become part of a “whole product solution” which can be made available to many without much additional work on your part.
- Set up a “bundling arrangement” where your products or services are part of an a la carte menu that the client can choose from to build their custom, yet ‘out of the box’ solution. Often, companies that sell horizontal applications or vertical ‘solutions’ want to sell and support the whole package. This is great for individual developers and service providers because it removes the need to be out selling. But getting the deal is one thing, making it successful is something else entirely. There are many things you can do – or hire someone to help you with – to maximize your potential through these relationships.
- Get creative with “channel resources” that can help you reach a broader audience. Wonder why eBay is doing so well?? They’ve made it possible for little guys to sell little (or big) things over the internet by applying their expertise, taking a cut, and giving the little guy a forum to sell. You could even consider getting into larger distributors (e.g. Tech Data) or retail chains (Comp USA).
- Partnering enables delivery of better solutions to your
clients.
“Whole products or services” are what clients are looking for today. End users don’t want to acquire components piecemeal – they look to implement packaged or bundled solutions that are already built, tested, and supported. It’s almost a necessity today that your products work out of the box with other products – that they’re integrated, tested, documented. If you’ve already done this, then you have a built-in partner network you can begin to leverage.
- Partnering helps you tap into opportunities that aren’t
available to us as individuals.
There are so many reasons why you might want to consider developing relationships but they all have to do with accomplishing things you can’t do by yourself, you can’t do effectively, or you don’t want to do at all (but should). Just think about what you might want to be doing, and then figure out how you can do it through the help of others. That’s partnering!!
Successful Partnering Starts with Goals
Partnering carries risks too. There is risk associated with change. There is risk of over-stretching your bandwidth. There is risk of being side-tracked and losing sight of your goals. And there is the very real risk of spending valuable and often scarce resources to invest in something outside of your immediate control -- and not getting the desired result. As difficult as it is to juggle your resources (including your time) today, factoring in partners could make it that much harder, at least at the beginning. But it is SO worth it.
Partnering: A Low-Risk, High-Return Proposition
The best place to start a partnering initiative is to review your own goals so you know what you’re aiming for. As the saying goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, all roads will take you there.” That’s dangerous ground for independent consultants who are typically short on bandwidth and resources.
Once you know your primary goals, a high value, low-risk way to get started is to put together a professional referral program (see below for details) that helps you get value out of professional relationships you probably already have.
For example, if you do computer maintenance work, you might identify a few individuals or organizations who sell computer systems or provide training or systems development solutions. Or if you do strategic, partner, and product marketing (like me), you might ally yourself with others who focus on sales or marketing communications. Find people who’s focus does not overlap too much with your own, establish ground rules, and expect to work out the details as you move forward. The less overlap, obviously, the easier it is to create meaningful relationships that drive business for you both.
One extremely important thing to keep in mind is that most of us are already overworked and economically overstretched. For this reason, you need to make sure there is an incentive for them to help you – a finders’ fee, reduced cost of your own services, mutual promotion and referrals, good will – without an incentive, the odds of getting support is far less. But be creative – it need not directly affect your bottom line!
Partnering works equally well on both sides of the relationship. It’s not only a sound business practice for you, it’s a great opportunity for your partners too. But keep it simple and focus on the goal of making it easy for others to recommend you – either directly through word-of-mouth, or indirectly via their website or materials. Either way, your mutual ‘reach’ is expanded and your customers will be able to find valuable and validated resources without having to go with an unknown quantity.
Whatever you do, I hope you start thinking about building your business through partners. And then taking the time to make them work. Whether you start small or large, as long as you think about your goals, your resources, and your options, your worst choice is to stand still!
Melinda Moses, Principal of MSM Strategic Marketing, has been providing innovative product marketing and partner development services that create real and lasting value to individuals and businesses since 1996. She can be reached at
melinda@msmstrategicmarketing.com or view her website at
www.msmstrategicmarketing.com
