Alliances between companies can develop markets, build value and profits, and now more than ever, those partnerships can give new impetus in challenging times.
Alliances expert Mario Joao, with more than 20 years experience in international companies and different industries told today’s webinar audience of sales professionals that it wasn’t easy to develop relationships when you can’t travel and meet people face to face, but he said, it?s important to keep working together to create winning strategies.
Joao, Vice President of Global Alliance Partners at Aveva, the industrial software specialists, has an impressive record. He built his department from scratch but has returned remarkable revenue figures in a clear demonstration that his structured, methodical approach works. This begins with agreeing the shared mission, setting out the value and the engagement model, then step by step, the details of how the alliance will work through to how success is measured.
Each partnership is tailor made.
Underpinning all this is the development of trust between parties. Trust is key in all good business relationships, but especially those that depend on partnerships between companies.
Joao said that alliance partners “can’t build trust by throwing a PowerPoint presentation.” Aligning “mission, values and culture” is important because “trust is not an on-off switch it takes time,” but it will pay off, if built from a solid foundation.
Customers, he said, really appreciate it when their vendors and partners work together to offer unique value to them: “Our growth and the deals we are winning, it’s all due to the fact that we are aligning, we are creating the strategy even in this challenging time.
“We started our Q1 in April, right in the middle of this lockdown and surprisingly, everybody within the organisation not just me, has been positively surprised with some of the results.
“A true partnership will be successful if it’s a two way street. If it’s just one-way, it’s setting up a partnership for failure,? he continued.
“I talk a lot more with my alliance partners over this period than last year, it’s important.”
And when it comes to making partnership profitable, there is a key guiding principle, he said. It’s all about “expanding the pie, not just dividing it.”