Catching & Painting Chickens
There is something straightforward about hiring a seller, holding them accountable and measuring their impact. Demonstrating impact through partnerships is both an art and a science. Like marketers, alliance managers get scrutinized when it’s unclear how they impact the top line. For consulting partners in large partnerships this can be agonizing. Step 1: Close a deal. Step 2: Find it in a system. Step 3: Make sure it’s associated to you. We call this Catching and Painting Chickens.
Here are 8 tips for top performing partners on measuring success:
1. Are You Playing or Practicing: You cannot win if you are not in the game. Play and play to win. Pick a set of numbers and track towards them. We can all agree that catching and painting chickens is a chore. If your goal is to win a championship, go win a championship. The alternative is pretending.
2. Clarity: More than values or mission statements, joint commitments guide and shape the course of the partnership. Forcing your team to sharpen the pencil and get specific will ensure you get the return you’re looking for from your investment. It will also ensure every member of your team understands your direction and how to get there.
3. The Power of Focus: There is something magical that happens when you can focus all of your energy on something specific. Most individuals don’t realize what they are capable of and the same is true of companies. Focus injects new energy for your team members. More importantly, it gathers up all of the fragmented time and energy that’s being wasted and puts it to use.
4. Measure the Entire Intersection: Your goal in an alliance is to create the greatest possible intersection between two companies. If you pick the wrong measurement and plan around it, you’ll shrink the partnership. We see this A LOT. An investor or an executive will fixate on something like new account introductions and be surprised when the relationship stagnates. Do not confuse key performance indicators for results.
5. Accountability: Setting and measuring targets clarifies your intent. Measuring targets clarifies your accountability. Accountable partners receive the most investment. You will need that investment to achieve scale. Identify your most critical connection points and establish accountability rhythms for each of them.
6. Know Your Relative Impact: Counting the chickens is a great opportunity for perspective. Understand your performance relative to similar firms and relative to the ecosystem. This is a great opportunity for you to reflect with your alliance partners on what is significant.
7. Coupons Can Be a Good Thing: Large companies can produce a lot of programs. It can be easy to skip the coupons at the grocery store. Who has time? With the right team in play those programs can all add up. You might be leaving millions of dollars on the table that is pure margin. If you want to get paid you need proven, demonstrable results.
8. Be Convicted: Many people are empowered to create programs that do not understand partners. This is especially true at the large cloud providers. We all hope for empathy but sometimes we have to help it. Be convicted, share openly when things don’t align to your business. There will be times when a specific program is not right. There will be times when a specific metric is not fit to measure. When that happens, be the voice of help. Speak up and bring solutions to the table.
3Seven does not condone acts of harm or violence to animals and is in no way implying that animals should be painted.