What do your partners really want?

We have often stressed in these articles the importance of positioning your organisation and your products and services with your partners and potential partners, in such a way that they fully appreciate the benefits that arise from working with you. You are seeking to establish a true "win-win" partnership, in which all parties have a contribution to make and all parties have something to gain that could not easily be achieved elsewhere.

What is often overlooked, however, is that in order to do this, you have to know what it is that your partners are looking for in a relationship. What do they expect their partners to do? How do they expect them to interact and behave? What information do they require, both up-front and on and ongoing basis? What sort of management controls do they expect to be in place?

A typical approach is to assume that what your partners will consider valuable is what your own company values in a relationship. In the absence of any other information, this is not a bad place to start. But it ignores the fact that differences in company size, country of operation, share ownership, product/service mix and a host of other factors all play their part in determining what an organisation considers as important. Consequently, what appears to be a great deal (from your perspective) for your partner, or a relationship that is being managed brilliantly and delivering the goods as far as you are concerned, can often be a source of disappointment for your partner. This in turn leads to frustration and misunderstandings. In their efforts to deal with the problems that arise and make the partnership 'better', some companies actually just make matters worse.

So what can be done to address this issue?

When marriages start to go wrong, counsellors try to get the husband and wife to improve the way they communicate with one another. The premise is that a major reason for the current difficulties is that neither the husband nor the wife knows what the other really wants out of the relationship. There is an assumption by the husband that the wife's desires and needs are similar to his own – and vice versa.

So if you are in a business relationship that appears to be suffering the symptoms of a communications breakdown, you could try sitting down with your partners and openly discussing the problem, to try to determine what everyone wants from the relationship. This may very well work, but it is likely to be more successful if you first of all do some research or get a third party to help you understand your partners' business and organisational profiles. Have a go at seeing things from their point of view. Quite often just the stimulus of an external facilitator is all that is required for light bulbs to flash on. Suddenly it all becomes clear – so that's why they're not so delighted as we are about the way things are going!

Preparation is everything

Ideally, this type of thinking should be done before the start of a relationship. It should be a key part of the preparation you go through before approaching prospective partners. It is no good just assuming that what would be great for you (in their position) will be viewed positively by other companies.

Larger companies, in particular, can get very frustrated by smaller companies who come to them with ill thought-through proposals that clearly demonstrate a lack of understanding of their business profile. For example, a smaller company may believe that just because it has some excellent technology, the larger company will automatically want to partner. Another example is where a small company has a relatively strong presence in a particular market segment or niche: but acting as a sales channel for the larger company would involve a wide range of considerations that often the smaller company has not identified and/or is poorly equipped to deal with.

In a workshop in September 2003 organised for the members of the West Midlands IT Association, Alcatel UK gave a presentation in which were set out the key attributes it looks for in a partner. These were:

• an innovative and reliable product or service
• knowledge of a relevant market
• a bridge to an opportunity, particularly in the Public Sector
• an ability to work with a large organisation (giving and getting clarity)
• business stability

Alcatel summarised its needs in the three words: Knowledge, Contact, Service. Clearly, anyone wishing to partner with Alcatel UK would do well to address these requirements in any proposition they put forward.

So one good way of finding out what your partners (or prospective partners) want is to ask them – or get someone to ask on your behalf. Only when you know what they truly want will you be able to position your company to best advantage and structure your relationships so that all parties get the most out of them. But this should ideally be done before you get into a relationship, rather than as an attempt to patch up a partnership that is already going awry.

Partnering Points on what your partners really want

• The reason partnerships are formed is so that companies with different business profiles can work together to achieve something they could not achieve alone – so by definition, each partner will have a different value set, and will view different aspects of a relationship as important.
• Your primary goal is to ensure that your own company gets maximum benefit from a partnership, but this can only be achieved if all partners are gaining benefit.
• Understanding what your partners want is key to structuring a partnership so that everyone wins: preparing beforehand will ensure you have a major role to play when decisions about how the partnership is to function are being made.
• It is advisable to get an outsider to help you to see a partner's point of view. Often a third party is able to ask questions of the partner that you may find difficult, or which the partner may have difficulty in answering.
• Of course, you must also be prepared to play your part in all of this: are you sure you know what your company really wants out of a partnership?

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