Corporate Partnering – Strategic OR Tactical and why?
When you are selling something that asks a company to change how it does things, it adds a complexity to the sale. Depending on the depth of the change required, the buyer has to involve more people in the buying decision.
In forging Strategic Partnerships, change is expected on many fronts from both companies. The promise of joining forces is evaluated and the joint opportunity sometimes requires much investment in time and money to make it happen.
When you are selling a product that fits well with a company’s existing product portfolio then less change is asked for and a faster decision can be expected. For example a client company has a product for Enterprise Systems Data Migration that works well with the large ERP and CRM systems such as Oracle and SAP. An ideal partner fit here are the System Integrator companies that implement Oracle and SAP Enterprise Systems.
The tactical part is that we are not asking them to change their business to resell our product. We are selling a product that fits in with their existing business process. This means that the sales people can understand and explain it, the implementation team can see how it can ease their burden or reduce their costs and the CEO of the company can deliver a more effective service or make greater margin on their business.
A comparison between Strategic Partners and Tactical Partners like Resellers or System Integrators:
| Strategic Partners | Resellers/System Integrators | |
| Time to Decision (from project start) |
3 to 6 months or longer | 3 months or faster |
| Investment Required | Product IntegrationJoint Venture Details New Business Unit New Management Structures New Sales Materials Training Initial projects involvement Support |
TrainingInitial projects involvement Support |
| Time to Revenue (from project start) |
12 to 18 months | 3 to 6 months or longer |
The estimated times here depend on so many items and none more prominent that the market opportunity you are meeting or responding to. The more immediate the opportunity, the faster the Time to Revenue and the faster you start making a return.
Another item is cultural fit – How fast can the relationship develop for the companies to start working together? This takes longer for Middle East and Far East companies where relationships develop slower and look to the more longer term.
There is more to consider here, but thats for another day. 
