The fast beat the slow
I’ve had a lot of comments from my last blog. And all credit to Skype - they move fast when they want to. It’s not for SDP to fix partner relations on their own, or any individual partner facing teams (Affiliate etc). It needs (1) Proper exec buy-in, not just lip service (2) Evangelism £££ (3) A co-ordinated partner vision (4) Real value and support for partners.
I hear they are working on the issues I raised and we’re all looking forward to seeing progress. An example they can look to is Orange, who manage to put their partner program centre stage, fully backed by the group CEO team.
When it comes to figuring out how to play with partners, I was given this advice a few years ago. It’s based on the idea of naval territories:
- Blue seas: Start by communicating clearly what is your competency, and where 3rd parties can complement. For example … we build the core product, 3rd parties do skins, plugins etc
- Red seas: (think Battle of Trafalgar - aka bloody water) Once partners know you might compete with them directly or even try to close them down, you are both free to move forward. That shouldn’t stop partners building similiar offerings - but you can “I told you so” when you start sending legalise.
- Grey seas: Honesty is the best policy. It’s ok so say “we might compete with you, you might fill a gap, but to be honest - we’ve no idea”.