Two companies, let’s call them East and West, had been in an alliance for 5 years and everything seemed to be fine. However, to the big astonishment of the people in West, it suddenly appeared that East wanted to terminate the partnership and was even happy to pay the penalty that was connected to the termination.
For West it always had been a lucrative partnership with a very attractive Return on Partner Investment (ROPI). A little research turned out that for East it had been a partnership with a negative return. Paying the termination fee was a better choice for them than continuing the partnership for the agreed contract term of another 5 years.
East and West made the mistake many companies make when it comes to a partnership: they expect it to manage itself. Unfortunately that did not happen and the two companies lost their connection along the way. Over the cause of the 5 years each went their own way and the partnership went sour.
Many partnerships fail due to the reason that the parties involved expect the partnership to run by itself. It doesn’t work that way; look at your personal friendships, what is the value of having them if you don’t pay attention to your friends?
In business partnerships you want to create partnerships with a positive – and preferably a high – Return on Partner Investment. Achieving that goal is not so difficult as it might seem, but it does require time, attention and structure.
This summer I will organize two Partnership Optimization Workshops, to be held in the Amsterdam area in the Netherlands. This workshop will focus on partner optimization covering everything that you need to do to run a successful partnership. In a full day workshop we will cover the ideal structure to work with your partnerships, put meeting structures in place and do an actual peer mapping.
At the end of the day you will have it all worked into your own partnership plan and you will be ready to apply it in your day-to-day work to immediately start creating an improved Return on Partnership Investment.
Full details are here: http://simoons.com/partnership-optimization-workshop