Business collaboration to keep you selling in a crisis
When business is tough, key allies can help you not only survive, but thrive.
In today's lunchtime webinar, hosted by the Association of Professional Sales (APS) alliance experts Peter Simoons and Anoop Nathwani explained how successful collaborations could boost business through the coronavirus crisis.
Good partnerships between companies combine strengths and resources to mitigate risk and build rewards. Now for instance, when options and cash might be severely limited, the answer to developing essential digital innovation and building market share, could be a strategic business alliance, they said.
Nathwani and Simoons told sales professionals that in many cases, partnering had become a "must-do" option. They warned that creating and maintaining productive alliances required people with the right skills, competencies, capabilities and behaviours; but the returns could be stellar, with positive partnerships leading to innovation, growth and rewards.
Peter Simoons explained that effective alliances "create value together that we cannot create alone. We create synergy. We create 1+1=3."
Nathwani said good business collaborations don?t just boost innovation: "I would say alliances and partnerships are the new innovation."
Nathwani set out three main area which drive partnerships: knowledge transfer and digital technology; market development - where companies expand into new markets, or look at brand leverage with other organisations to enter those new markets; and thirdly, efficiencies, cutting costs and mitigating risk.
Trust between partners is key to a flourishing alliance, and so is planning.
Peter Simoons quoted a report by APS partners, the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, which said that companies which follow a structured alliance process consistently report a better chance of succeeding "up to 80%, while companies that jump in, ad hoc, have only a 20% success rate."
Today's webinar was hosted by Ben Turner and Nina Christiansen of the APS.
For more online masterclasses, to help professional sellers through the Covid crisis, click the button below
More news
Summertime and the selling is easy..
We have a great programme of events through June and July that could help you become more efficient, more focused, more in tune with your customers and boost your ability to sell.