Trust is essential in building high performance partnerships

Trust is essential in building high performing partnerships. Companies that have a high degree of trust in each other contribute 78% more sales than those with a lower level of trust. But how do you build trust? One of the foundation steps is to create a plan.

Managing a partner relationship without a plan would be like trying to fly a plane without a joystick. While there is a slim chance you may get to where you want to go, it is a 100% certainty that whatever the outcome it will be a wild ride filled with many surprises, twists and turns and more than likely a crash landing at the end!

Having a joined up, disciplined, structured approach to create joint plans is a proven success factor for working with partners. Planning puts a backbone in the relationship and when done effectively increases the performance and productivity of all involved. When done badly it is a distraction, a time waster and seen negatively as overhead and unwanted administration. When done well, it has clear actions, mutual goals, SMART objectives and regular reviews. The challenge to a real plan is that you must agree it at the core, but execute it across the whole company. If everyone is not aligned and committed, it will fail. Everybody on each side has to believe in the partnership, and trust that it is the correct thing to do. The biggest killer of any plan is lack of trust. It eats away at any relationship until it dies. As the old saying goes, ‘it takes years to build trust, but only a second to kill it!’

A structured and joint planning approach is more than a set of revenue goals and a discussion about how to spend the MDF each quarter!

It is not just my personal experience, many channel leaders have seen that successful collaboration in planning leads to trust, which in turn leads to better collaboration, and that leads to revenue results. QED.

According to an article published in the Harvard Business Review, resellers that have a high degree of trust in their manufacturer partners contribute 78% more sales than those with a lower level of trust. The trust factor correlates directly with financial performance, effectiveness of field execution and resource allocation. In a recent survey by ChannelEnablers.com, they asked a key question. The results below show the issue & the opportunity for Colt.

"Would your partners say they have a high level of trust in your organization and people?"

Less than 20% of respondents who failed to plan properly said yes!

Conclusion = Plans need to be agreed, mutually constructed & supported by both Executives and the wider business. If plans are created in a step-by-step process by people who have the skills to engage partners at senior levels to talk about their business goals and expected returns – if planning involves the partner at each stage of the process – if plans are clear and concise and are regularly reviewed – they have a much higher chance of producing positive results.

It is said that great plans can lead to great results – but even a 'pretty good plan' can lead to great business results if it is built around win-win outcomes and has a high degree of vendor/partner commitment to execute.

At Colt we’re lucky to work with partners who are more than happy to devote time to such planning, share our vision and commit to making them succeed. I look forward to sharing more successful results from partnership development in the near future.