Getting everyone singing from the same hymn sheet

One of the major challenges facing any person who is charged with managing a partnership is getting everyone involved to tell the same story. Why is this important? Well, for one thing you need to convince your customers and potential customers that buying from the "partnership" is a sound business decision. Similarly, to serve you well your suppliers will need to understand how the partnership works and where the relative responsibilities of you and your partners lie.

There are other stakeholders who will want to know the logic that underpins the partnership. Shareholders, market analysts, and the employees of the organisations involved will all want to hear "the story" of why this partnership is such a good idea. You should also consider how your current partners (if any) will react to the new partnership, plus any potential (future) partners who may be interested in working with you.

With so many constituencies to communicate with, it is essential that you have a firm foundation from which to develop the essential briefing materials. And this means that you must agree with your partners and write down what the joint business case is for working together. Without this common framework, approved within each partner organisation, there will be no chance of achieving the goal of "getting everyone singing from the same hymn sheet" – for the simple reason that you will have no hymn sheet to sing from!

Developing the hymn sheet

Experience shows that the best place to start is identifying the true customer value that the partnership brings to your target markets. In theory this should have been done well before the partnership was put in place, because it ought to have been one of the major drivers for setting up the partnership in the first place. But, as we have discussed in other istarisArticles, partner managers are often presented with a partnership as a fait accompli, or partnerships may be inherited through takeovers, mergers etc.

Identifying true customer value is a task best undertaken by people within your and/or your partner organisations who a) understand the requirements of your target markets, b) know what drives your customers and how they respond to your current sales activities, and c) know the technical possibilities and limitations of your offerings. It is unlikely that this breadth of knowledge will be found in any individual, so a cross-functional team approach is necessary.

Once the team has identified the value, it must be communicated in several different ways – to customers, to investors, to your and your partners' employees (including, and perhaps especially to senior management!), and most importantly to the salesforce. It will be the salespeople who, on a daily basis, will be taking your key messages to customers. It is vital that these messages are clear, concise and pertinent to the customer value that your partnership is bringing to the market.

Documenting and distributing the hymn sheet

One of the most efficient ways to communicate your customer value is through a specially written and focused Sales Guide. Made available to all people involved in the selling process, the guide encapsulates in a single place all the reasons why customers should buy the offerings brought to the market by the partnership. If there are a number of partners concentrating on different market segments, the guide can be customised to address specific needs, but the bulk of it will remain common to all salespeople and partners.

Once produced, the guide serves as a common reference point for all types of communication. Senior management can be directed to the summary sections of the guide to ensure that the key messages they take to shareholders, analysts and executives in customer organisations are in line with those being used by the salesforce. Similarly, parts of the guide can be re-purposed to form the basis for marketing materials. Other briefings, such as press releases and employee updates, can also use the same messages.

One of the major advantages of the Sales Guide approach is that, if done well and produced professionally, the guide becomes the document that everyone naturally will turn to. It can be made available in paper, electronic or interactive formats, whichever is most convenient. As a partner manager you will find that it is not difficult to get people to use the guide as the common source of information. Consequently, in both your own and your partners' organisations you achieve the consistency of message that is so important to developing and maintaining credibility and trust. The Sales Guide, in other words, becomes your "hymn sheet", and getting everyone singing from it will not be as difficult as you might have imagined.

To learn how you can source a Sales Guide via Istaris Business Services click here.

Partnering Points on getting everyone singing from the same hymn sheet

• Before you begin to develop your "hymn sheet", make sure you have an agreed joint business case with your partners, fully supported and approved within your own and your partners' organisations.
• With the business case in place, it is quite feasible for you to develop the hymn sheet on your own. However, you may wish to involve one or more partners to add detail that you are not sure of, or to approve key messages as they are created.
• Don't spend too long identifying the customer value. A well-organised day or two should do it. If it takes longer than this, or you can't agree what the true customer value is, it is likely that you are in the wrong sort of partnership.
• It is possible to write your own Sales Guide. Some companies have tried it, but generally you and your people will have neither the time, the skills, nor the aptitude to do the job well. Much better to get expert help, so that the result is something that salespeople and others will want to use, and will turn to naturally as a source of information.
• Once you have the Sales Guide, ensure you roll it out effectively within your own organisation, and encourage your partners to do likewise. Having put all that effort in to creating it, make sure everyone who needs it knows of its existence and how to get access to it.
• Finally, keep the guide up-to-date. As time moves on your customers' needs will change, new market drivers will emerge, even your partners may be different. Ensure you have a programme in place for producing and distributing updates to the "hymn sheet" as and when they are required.

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