Business Alliances

1. Business Alliances How to find and select Alliances partner? Dada : 4880,Vorakarn : 4980534, Natcha : 4980546, Patharaporn : 4980623

2. Where Does One Find Great Alliance Partners? • Your suppliers: They know your competitors and other local business people from a different perspective than you. You can learn about their buying habits, bill-paying habits, and other important information about them. They are generally a wealth of knowledge. • Your customers: They have most likely done some business with the person or company that you are seeking. • Your professional or trade association: The executive director of the association is usually the person who is most in tune with the players in your industry.

3. Where Does One Find Great Alliance Partners? • Newspaper and trade magazines: These sources offer current information on the movers and shakers in many industries. They also compare, research, and tell interesting bits of information about businesses and key layers. • Local successful business people: They can be found at the chamber of commerce activities and mixers, civic service clubs, charitable organizations, and even local seminars. • Study groups and mastermind alliances: If satisfied partners are unable to be found, start one with people in your community. • Think about outside professionals: consultants, lawyers and accountants. • Internet

4. Selecting an Alliance Partner • Identifying a Strategic Alliance Partner’s Core Values • First, compare your core values with the five values. Be clear on what both you, and your company, are all about. • Second, start looking at possible partners, seek to understand their values and try to determine if your circles of interest overlap. “ The more your circles of interest overlap, the better the chance for your future alliance to be successful and lasting”

5. Selecting an Alliance Partner Tips: • If you have little information on your potential partner, first try working with them on a small project. Though the project is small, be sure it is somewhat difficult. Then wait and watch to see how they operate under pressure. You will then have a better idea about their viability as an alliance partner. • Understand your needs, strengths and weaknesses. Be sure to also understand those of alliance partners. Do this and your success is nearly certain.

6. Five Core Values 1. Trust For alliance relationships, trust is the necessary element to move the possible alliance from inertia to action. Without the trust factor, alliance relationships are sure to fail. 4 steps to help you in building trust. • Recognize and reinforce the relationship behaviors you want of you alliance partners • Break down the communication barriers between your and your alliance partner’s organizations. • Complete a relationship value update form, and then encourage your alliance partner to do the same. • Be a role model of the behaviors you believe are important for alliance partners. However, trust wisely, and with caution. Do the right things, looking toward the long-term rather than the short term.

7. Five Core Values 2. Tolerance • For an alliance to work, the core value of tolerance must be cherished and practiced by all the alliance members. When you can accept the value of an idea rather than be concerned about whose inspiration it was, you will truly exhibit tolerance. Then you exhibit tolerance, the by-product of your effort is understanding. When you understand your alliance partner and their needs, you will work toward creating value for them in their areas of need.

8. Five Core Values 3. Cooperation • Success is only possible through an attitude of cooperation. Today, most business want to grow and that is an important reason for developing strategic alliances. And growth is the natural outcropping of cooperation. Therefore, in order for alliances to grow and succeed, they must cooperate and work together, rather than separately. 4. Commitment • Caring enough about your strategic alliance and its members is the necessary foundation to making a commitment. It is this element that allows each partner in an alliance to feel he will be heard, and will be reasonably safe from criticism.

9. Five Core Values 5. Mutuality A strategic alliance must be an institution where individuals, organizations, and companies come together to develop a relationship of trust, tolerance, cooperation, commitment, and mutuality. Importantly, couple these values with the desire to win and now you have the foundation for successful strategic alliances. So mutuality is the must have ingredient in a successful partnering alliance.

10. The 10 Crucial Qualities to Look In An Alliance Partner 1. Your partner wants to win. • Pick a partner who is already a winner. The relationship with a weak partner will only bring you and your organization down. 2. Your partner must understand that they are ultimately responsible for their own success. • Don’t always assume that your partner is looking out for your best interest. You both are human – and as such, are susceptible to the fault of not always acting in your partner’s best interest.

11. The 10 Crucial Qualities to Look In An Alliance Partner 3. Your partner must be an active listener. • active listening is a crucial skill. This helps you to know what you need to do and when the other side is falling behind in their commitment to you. Alertness from both sides equals mutual success. 4. Your partner must understand and care about what drives your business. • Because successful partnering is about synergies, you must consistently give and receive additional value in the relationship. The only way to add value is to know what it is that creates value for your partner. This is the only possible with an understanding of the needs and goals of your partner.

12. The 10 Crucial Qualities to Look In An Alliance Partner 5. Your partner must respond to, and act on, feedback. • The only possibility for a forward and beneficial movement in any organization is with leaders who are willing to accept council. 6. Your partner must be flexible, especially when events or circumstances are not what were expected. • Flexibility is absolutely necessary because things will never be exactly as we expect. Silicon Graphics’ Stan Meresman believes in “saying flexible enough to evolve our relationships.”

13. The 10 Crucial Qualities to Look In An Alliance Partner 7. Your partner must be trusting, trustworthy, and with integrity, respecting all with whom they come in contract. • Partnering with people who are trusting and trustworthy relieves a major nuisance, one that you can do without 8. Your partner seeks win/win arrangements and solutions. • You do not want a partner who sees the world as zero-sum game. You want a partner that is interested in making the pie bigger, so everyone gets more. This creates a desire for both of you to continue the relationship. The partnering advantage becomes stronger, the longer the relationship lasts.

14. The 10 Crucial Qualities to Look In An Alliance Partner 9. Your partner must understand that partnering is a relationship of interdependence. • Visualize your partner and yourself as overlapping circles. The parts that overlap are your area of mutual interest and value. The greater the overlap, the greater the mutual interest and value. This overlapping area is your area of interdependence. 10. You and your partner must have great chemistry. • If both people or organizations exude many of the above qualities, and have good chemistry, it is an unstoppable alliance. This is what we all desire to achieve.

15. Credentials of Your Future Alliance Partner • The ability to do and produce what your partner perceives you can (individual or company) through skills, technology, and relationships. • Alliance agreements are of little value when a partner cannot deliver what is promised. • Have something new to bring to the party. Find something that is not only necessary but also innovative. Building an alliance with someone who only has these to offer what is necessary is fine, but limiting. Being partner with the one who can bring differences to the party, allowing you to increase your penetration within a limited local market.

16. Credentials of Your Future Alliance Partner • Having the financial ability to stay-the-course. If your alliance partner has the means to continually contribute their agreed share, your continued success is promising. • Cultural compatibility, operates from integrity, and is willing to challenge existing corporate paradigms. • Complimentary core strengths, allowing for benchmarking of overlapping capabilities and the elimination of “recreating of the wheel syndrome.”

17. Credentials of Your Future Alliance Partner • The ability to think not only strategically, but also tactically. • Following are three relationship realities, unpleasant as they are. These realities will have a powerful effect, good or bad, on the success of your alliance relationship. • People do not change after marriage! • What you see is what you get! • You deserve the partner you select!

18. Knowing an alliance partner Knowing the alliance partner, who they are is important. How? • You should visit your potential partner at their place of business. You must do make an appointment but be tricky to show up a day earlier and if they say you’re a day early, say “I’m sorry, my mistake. Can we visit anyway?” If they are less than willing to let you look around, you would be suspicious and consider the situation a red flag. Catching your potential alliance partner in their real life, not with the special face they put on for you is important. Knowing who your partner really is eliminates much of the need for conflict resolution and exit agreements.

19. “ Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.” Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1500)