Developing Strategic Alliances

Grant Leboff: Phil, I think one of the most under utilised strategies is developing partnerships and alliances with others. How important do you think that is?

Phil M Jones: Well, I know for a fact you cannot do everything all by yourself. Throw that idea out of the window for starters. Partnerships are what big businesses are built on. There is no other way around creating something that is of huge significance without collaboration in some way. Often, the fastest way to grow is to find other people who are serving the people that you would like to serve, that already have a trusted pool of your target market, that you have an offer they could benefit to. Getting into sensible meetings with those kind of people, to try and find like a win-win-win scenarios where you win, they win but most of all the customer wins, can really fast track your growth.

Grant Leboff: For you, what makes a good partnership. If you’re sitting in your office today thinking, “Okay, I didn’t do enough strategic alliances.” Where do you start? What makes a good partnership?

Phil M Jones: I mean, there are a thousand things that make a good partnership. Largely, you’ve got to get on a human level. There needs to be some kind of long-term trust. You got to enjoy each other, well, not enjoy each other’s company but respect each other’s offerings to a point where you see value in hanging out together. Other things that then make great strategic partnerships is that win-win-win point that I made a second ago is that there genuinely needs to be something where the end user of the products or services says thank you to both parties so he’s grateful to the involvement.

The best type of strategic partnerships is if you and I would go into a partnership and what happened is you’re going to recommend to your clients that my service would be a benefit, right? The best outcome is when your clients come back to you and say thank you for my service. That’s were often you can get that kind of a motive value from it, not just the financial returns.

The other big thing with strategic alliances is where you never lose sight of where that opportunity comes from. If you are recommending to your clients do business with me, is I need to remember that you’re the hand that feeds me. I need to respect that with the right levels of gratitude in the other direction. Even if the business doesn’t work out, I’ve got to be thankful for you doing your part which is either introducing me, publicising me, marketing me towards that growth. If I mess up at my bit which is closing the sale, that’s not your fault. So the respect for the continual appreciation is important. That means having a long-term view.

Grant Leboff: That’s good. There other thing I was thinking about when you’re talking about this win-win-win is that a set of people you want to partner for value. What I mean is is together, you can create value that separately for you couldn’t for your customers, right?

Phil M Jones:Right.

Grant Leboff: If you think about it that way, is that how you think you achieve that win-win-win?

Phil M Jones: The most important person in that win circle is the end user, the client, the customer. If you can do something you couldn’t do by yourself, that’s where the other two parties come out winning from… I agree wholeheartedly that what I need in the partnership is not, “Hey, let me try this with you so I can reinvent your service, so I can then do it myself and cut you out, I need to look at what you might have that you could add to my clients for I think I’ll never be good enough to be able to do that as well you do it by myself but my clients could really benefit.” I want to bring your specialism and your expertise towards them so then they’re grateful towards my help and it’s collating that.

It’s about becoming customer centric. That’s where it comes back from. When you can look at your pool of customers and say, “What do these guys really need help with? What are they buying from somebody else that they could be buying from me? Or what problems or struggles or challenges do they have that I could find them a trusted supplier for?” When you understand that as sales people or marketers, that you’re in the service industry, you know your target market and you understand who you serve, you then go out and curate and collate a group full of partnerships that add massive value to your customer base. That’s where that longevity kicks in.

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