Be opened to have 🚩difficult conversations too

💰 Demands that you cannot meet

Partners, especially those who perform well or have leverage, tend to ask for higher margins, more marketing support, longer exclusivity or something else that you not always can give.

Missing agreed KPIs is not uncommon in #partnerships too. Everyone is excited in the beginning, but then life happens.

📋 To begin with, it’s essential to have structure and cadence of communication and rules on customer targeting to minimize these causes.

Quarterly/monthly reviews, transparency around who you work with. Usually it makes sense to connect internal and partner teams so there is an alignment.

Have a simple way to share/sync on deals and transparent reporting with your partner - from deals to milestones to communication between teams.

🗣 But if disagreements arise, as they inevitably do:

✔️ Acknowledge your partner's perspective

Show them that you’ve actually heard them, and for this a simple repeating back of the summary of their concerns helps immensely.

✔️ Frame disagreements in a positive, less binary way

Partnerships are always about opportunity at the end of the day. You’re working on growing the pie together and the bigger the pie the bigger their piece.

✔️ Small concessions help

“Okay, we’ll work on this deal ourselves, but we’ll give you more share in our marketing or extend your exclusivity in this territory.”

💡 Also we outlined a detailed framework in one of our fireside chats.

In conflict resolution with partners you have two levers:

1️⃣ Shared values, or common objectives or common incentives

2️⃣ Personal relationship as an individual, with the partner company

Link in comments.

What is your best practice in resolving hard questions with partners?