The 120-Day Strategic Alliance Collaborative Launch Plan
Experience has shown that the first 120 days in the life of an alliance have the most influential impact on its ultimate success. The Launch Plan will generally come after the Term Sheet and before the Final Contractual Agreements are in place. Even after the legal teams have agreed to the broad concepts of the alliance, the final structuring and legal documentation may take weeks or even months to complete. In most cases, the commencement of the alliance begins well in advance of the closing of the legal documents.
The Launch Plan is designed around Actionable and Measurable Steps and Activities that will prove crucial to the success of the alliance. To create the 120-Day Collaborative Launch Plan, you will likely extract definition and information from the Term Sheet, the Alliance-at-a-Glance Canvas document, the outcomes of the Joint Planning Workshops, and any other documents that will prove relevant.
The Objectives for the 120-day Collaborative Launch Plan are to:
- Complete a task-focused, actionable and measurable short term plan in order to assure follow-through with implementation.
- Negotiate and structure the alliance to meet the needs of each partner and provide a powerful value proposition to the targeted market. Put together repeatable value proposition(s), programs and processes that can be easily executed at the local or regional field level when the alliance is rolled out and implemented on a larger scale.
- Engender the full commitment of both groups of alliance and operational managers to avoid any conflict and confusion later at the most critical period when the alliance is visible to all internal and external customers.
- Create momentum and early victories for the alliance. The best way to get an alliance supported and deployed company-wide or BU-wide is to start small, find friends/champions of the alliance at the field level, test the value prop, the assumptions and the processes, get some early successes, broadcast the success and make the sales people and other involved heroes, repeat and expand.
The 120-Day Collaborative Launch Plan ensures:
- Purpose and structure of the alliance;
- Minimal conflict between the partners at the critical first stages of the alliance;
- Definition of a set of relationship management roles and structures;
- Plan ways to work together;
- Establish some common ways of thinking about collaboration and develop tools and approaches that will help in the process;
- A clear agreement and alignment of activities;
- Test the alliance on a small scale and work out the kinks; and,
- Gain momentum with a continuous stream of small concrete victories.
What does it cover?
Critical activities, success factors and metrics which will be essential for a successful launch in the 4 month window.
When does it come into play?
The plan should be developed shortly before the actual launch. It covers 120 days because this period will span a quarterly reporting period, while being immediate enough to convey a sense of urgency and long enough to see different patterns emerge, test our assumptions and processes, draw some conclusions and apply some modifications and remedy if necessary, and ideally achieve some key wins.
How does it get created?
Keeping in mind that: “People support what they help create!”, the plan will be the results of collaborative efforts between the two partners.
Note: The content of the 120-day Collaborative Launch Plan and the use of templates will largely depend on the complexity of the partner relationship and the importance and impact of the partnership on the corporate strategy and revenue potential (of both organizations).
A few Examples of Templates you might want to include in the Collaborative Launch Plan are:
Responsibility Charting:
Responsibility charting reduces the ambiguity as the work group interfaces by clarifying roles and responsibilities to prevent people from tripping over each other or from important tasks falling through the cracks resulting in slowing down the momentum of the alliance.
Resources Requirements – Support Groups
Top and middle rank support will be essential to the success of the partnership. List the people and groups (Your Organization and Partner Organization) who have to be actively on board and the role they’ll play: support (S), implementer (I), approver (A)…
Key Action Items / Owner / Timeline
What action items must occur to get the alliance going in the right direction?
Communication Plan
An effective communications strategy addressing both internal and external constituents is essential to the successful implementation of any alliance.
Next steps:
Assuming that the first 120-days are successful and conclusive, the next steps will be to: Collaboratively create an Operational Plan (which should include yearly and quarterly metrics) and Design and Rollout a Sales Enablement, Engagement and Execution to generate key wins.
I’d like to hear your thoughts and comments on this important topic. Please share your best practices with the rest of us.
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As a revenue acceleration strategist, Francine Allaire work with corporations and emerging companies on accelerating their growth and increasing their sales by harnessing the power of sales, partnerships, business development and social media strategies to enhance brand equity, generate leads and increase sales. For more information on how Francine can assist your organization, please visit: http://RevenueAccelerationStrategies.com
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