Really happy that you're here today. Uh And thank you for joining. I hope the conference has been great so far. Um So just a bit of uh background about me. Uh I live in London originally from Israel.Uh And throughout my career, I've led new initiatives, programs, departments within the, the companies that I work for or perhaps volunteered for where I needed to find new partners or clients. Uh So just to give you a few examples, um I led the fundraising for university and had to identify strategic partners to promote and sponsor our activities. I consulted start ups uh about building partnerships and building their, their own communities. And I now work at the organization that's called UK Israel Tech Hub. And what I do there is I build the tech partnerships between Israeli start ups and UK Corporates. Um So my daily work is really about finding strategic partners for our groundbreaking project uh and initiative, whether um as sponsors or as corporate clients, uh engaging start up communities who want to expand globally. So, as you can see, I've got quite a lot of experience here and um I'd love to share with you that uh that experience as much as I can in 20 minutes.

Uh And I guess, you know, if, if I have here in the audience, uh people who are in a partnership role, business development and partnership manager, ecosystem development, community building, this could be useful for you. But also if you, if you sell a product or service, um if you're a CEO of, of a business or in fact, also, if you, if you don't represent uh a company, but interested in exploring building connections as an individual, I hope this will be uh interesting and useful for you. So what we're gonna cover today, we're gonna cover a few things. The first is what and why, you know, what are strategic partnerships and what's the value for us uh for our customers for our business, then we'll cover the who um different types of strategic partners and also strategic partnerships. Uh and how the life cycle of building connections, uh practical tactic, tactics and strategies that I'll try and share the things that work for me uh to make the initial contact and how to approach new leads and then turn them into more engaged partners. And I'll try and use loads of examples throughout the presentation to give you a bit of context and really bring it to life. So let's start uh with what our strategic partner partnerships.

So if we look at the standard definition, it's uh it's really a mutually beneficial agreement between several separate companies or people uh in a certain area. This could be marketing, it could be supply chain, product, technology, finance, or sometimes also a combination of those.

And the gen the general idea is that by combining resources, uh partners add advantages for each other and, and through the alliance uh and really enhance their offers and offset costs. Um Some good examples of partnership agreements you can see here. Uh hopefully, brands that uh you may have heard of. Uh for example, a placement of Starbucks coffee shops at Barnes and Nobles bookstores. Uh My favorite one is T Mobile and Taco Bell that opens T mobile stores uh that creating partnerships to sell smartphones with the side of tacos. Uh And another example is the American media company Buzzfeed uh in the charity Best Friends Animal Society that formed a simple yet effective strategic alliance. So Buzzfeed was able to produce cute and mission driven content, use the actress as you can see here, Emma Watson, who was answering fun questions and playing with the adorable kittens. Uh And thanks to Buzzfeed's 200 million strong readership, the content successfully drove more adoptions of kittens and generated even more traffic to Buzzfeed. So you can see it's a win win.

Uh An example for my own work, uh we developed a program to support women founders by introducing them to investors to uh corporate open innovation and other start up founders. So I looked for strategic partners that can help me really promote this to as many, many women founders as possible. Uh And so I identified Google for start ups and uh we, we decided on the partnership where they helped us to promote it, uh referred founders to us, added content to our program, hosted us in their premises. So we in turn, we strengthened their reach to more women founders uh in their position as an organization that makes an impact in that space also became stronger as a result of them working with us. So let's talk about the why, why are we even talking about uh partnerships? So one reason is because companies of all sizes are really facing the constant pressure to do more with less. So more and more companies seek out partners to gain access to new markets. Um We would really less to spend and I think when done right, partnerships do have a massive massive impact on your business ability to scale. Another reason is because in today's digital economy, we are seeing the rise of what we call the enlightened customer.

So to get the advantage in the customer's decision making process, businesses do need to enable greater market visibility and trust and they often do that with partnerships with other trusted brands. So these are kind of the two main reasons that I think it's useful to, to discuss strategic partnerships. Um Now on that note, I want to share a couple of misconceptions that I found regarding uh the topic of of partnerships that perhaps the standard definition does not cover and we'll try and challenge them. So the first misconception is that we often hear that we should not collaborate with our competitors because you know, they they will eat our market share. Very few leaders uh successfully utilize the partner ecosystem around them and really missing opportunities as a result of that misconception.

The second one is that sales is linked to revenue, but partnership is not partnership is more about brand awareness, marketing or perhaps market positioning. And over the years, I've seen quite a few CEO S tasked with accelerating company growth. Uh But what surprised me that very few of them actually consider that indirect go to market strategy that uses strategic partnerships to help scale uh expand into new markets. Uh And, and we'll obviously talk about that later, but it is part of, of your growth strategy. So let's start with the first misconception and map the strategic partners types to show that competitors can indeed become our partners. And I want to do that uh using a case study to bring it a little bit to life. And, and the case study is about an organization that I supported a few years ago um that aims to increase the number of working uh of, of women working in tech in the Middle East. Uh And they do this via training young girls in coding uh and their objective when working with me on building their partnership was to increase the number of girls on the program, including expanding into new geographies and communities and also to raise funds for their organization.

So let's look at the four segments that I've used to map their ecosystem and really identify the, the partners which could also be relevant to you in any context uh that you work in. So firstly, we found corresponders, these are companies that have a similar mission and image in the market but serve a different target audience. So in my example, it could be similar organization that train young girls for coding, but in a different geographical area or perhaps that serve a community that my client could not reach, then we looked at complements, these are organizations where the value proposition or mission is different, but they have the same target market.

Um In our example, it could be organizations that offer their services to girls at the age of 14 to 17, but not coding services. So for example, it could be youth movement, it could be after school courses. Then we found collaborators, businesses that have a different mission and serve uh a different population but can help them achieve their objectives. So for example, uh the schools that host the training sessions, mentor networks to get more facility um grant or capital providers.

And I guess if, if you're a product company, then the questions that you can ask to identify collaborators could be who creates or supplies my product, uh who processes my credit card payment, who provides my ecommerce platforms. And lastly, we looked at competitors, which is very important segment, you know, in, in the complex landscape of today's business ecosystem, it is almost inevitable that companies with a large uh network of partners are in fact competing with some of them. And this is why I guess the term competition was coined a term that is derived from co-operative competition. Uh And I'm frequently asked by um by business leaders, why would you do this? Why should I partner with a competitor? And it is a key question to ask. So generally speaking, there are a number of reasons why it might make sense to you. Firstly, it is about meeting customer requirements. Sometimes customers demand products and services that can only be achieved together with a competing business. So if you go back to my example of, of uh the coding for girls, there might be a demand to design a coding training program that aims at older university uh students, for example. So we could then partner with a similar organization to design together this specific program. Uh Then it is about competing as an ecosystem, a strategic alliance can really strengthen both companies against outsider.

And, and we see this all the time when multiple airlines, even where they operate on competing routes, they collaborate with each other for example, on issuing flight tickets and then checking baggage for each other's travelers. Because by cooperating the airlines deliver a better experience to, to travelers and become more competitive. Uh Another reason to collaborate with our competition is to create a shared technology or standard and this, this is my favorite personally. So for instance, Volkswagen, Mercedes Ford BMW, they all collaborated to create a standard charging station for electric vehicles. Um A standard plug means that there didn't have to be separate uh networks of charging stations for each manufacturer. And one network would really um serve uh uh all all the people and, and encourage the adoption of electric vehicles on, on the whole. So we can see that uh with all this uh kind of mapping of uh strategic partners, there is a kind of a low cost route for for uh for us to get more technology and market access. Uh And I hope that you can use that mapping uh method and really apply to your work and I'm happy to share it with you later.

So let's go to the second misconception and really demonstrate how strategic partnerships if done right can increase revenue beyond traditional uh direct go to market tactics. And we now map types of partnerships that can facilitate um with each other uh with each of the partner um that I just mentioned before. So the first type of strategic partnership that I chose and there are many, but I chose to focus on three uh is strategic marketing partnerships. Um So here, you know, you want to look for a company where you can share a customer base or a company operated uh in a related field that can market your goods or services to a new audience. Uh So maybe you have a company that provides one service, a logo design. Uh You might do well to partner with a web developer that can refer you to clients when graphics are necessary and, and vice versa. Another type of strategic partnership is go to market. Um These take a really different, different of uh forms, but I wanna focus on one specifically, which is channel partnerships in which the channel partner acquires your product from you at a reduced price and then resells your company product or service and often add some sort of value to, to it.

For example, cus customization. Um and the unique value of a channel partner is the strong understanding that they have and, and really the strong relationship that they have with, with your customer and the customer industry and that's why they are very, very strong uh option for increasing your sales volume.

Um Examples that I chose here is the website builder weeks. They announced a partnership with Vodafone. And the purpose of this partnership is that small and medium sized businesses that are clients of Vodafone uh in the UK can establish their online presence using Wes uh website building capabilities.

And the last strategic partnership that I'll touch on uh today is um about technology integration of technologies. And this partnership often involves no reselling. It simply brings two products together as an integrated solution that is complementary to the solution that each of them offers.

For example, if you sell software for, for X ray machines, you may choose to partner with a company that manufactures and sells the machine themselves. Um The, the idea is that your company and the technology will benefit from the association with a trusted partner and you can then reach a new market segment. Uh The example that I like most is when Uber and Spotify uh partner to create a soundtrack for your ride campaign. Uh In this effort, each brand really relied on the on the other technology to create a positive experience for customers while waiting for their um for their Uber ride to arrive. And so it's really about uh creating that each other's brand in a positive light and to gain uh return customers for both uh for both technologies. And let's briefly touch on on the how uh because they can go wrong partnerships and I can talk from experience. And so there are a few things that we need to be mindful of. The first one is alignment, alignment of uh vision to make sure that you are uh clear on what's most important objective for both of you is uh then the value creation.

How are you creating value for your company, your partner, and most importantly, your customers and stakeholders then emphasize accountability and metrics. Really put all the details very clearly. Uh you know, the services that you perform together, the terms of the agreement percentage of profit, the timeline, all of that, the more it is clear, the smoother and the more effective the the partnership process becomes. And then it's about the flexibility. It's about the ability to really change if the assumptions change, if the external business climate changes or if there is a global pandemic, let's say. And finally, it really is really about the collaborative mindset. It's about the attitude and the mental approach that really fosters that collaboration.

And here it's about people nurture those relationships connect socially, keep everyone in the loop, recognize each other's capabilities, cultures and motivation and, and really act people to people. It's not just organizations. Um So here very briefly because we are quite short on time.

Um I'm gonna touch on how to build connections that initial stage of building connections because that's key. We often want to create that warm introductions, but sometimes we don't have warm introductions, right? So we need to approach cold. So there are a couple of principles that guide me when I'm writing the first email or linkedin message. So the first principle is less is more always be concise and to the point, don't lay all your cards out and, and really be clear about your ask. The second one is in the introduction, you really want to stand out. It's about taking the opportunity to signal your value. And at the same time, mention the person's latest blog post ebook podcast. So it really looks personal. Uh and when we talk about the value, it's really about explaining them in that first sentence, how you can benefit them. And then there should be a very specific call to action if you're requesting a, a quick phone call, suggest a time frame or, or a few options. And here I, I added a few of the texts that I use, but this is really um just a taster and I'm happy to share this with you um you know, on, on linkedin because these are templates that do help me uh all the time. Um And there are a few additional tricks that help me boost my response rate. Uh It's to give visibility to your prospects by inviting them to, to speak or to be interviewed. Uh Another option is to use the same person uh sorry, different people in the organization.

You can start from the bottom. You don't have to start from the decision maker if you cannot reach them. Because sometimes, you know, people at the bottom of the of that ladder are a bit more motivated and have more time to invest. Uh try and create a sense of importance and urgency. A bit of FOMO does not uh uh does not do harm, you know, we are in conversation with. So and so we are selecting 2 to 3 partners, uh join the waitlist, uh put yourself out there. That's another thing, you know, make sure that you self promote. So people know to associate you uh with a trusted brand. Um So you can hold public speaking, mentoring, training, uh social media posts, of course. And self promotion is a, is a really key area that I'm uh I'm really establishing as an I am remarkable um facilitator which I'm sure some of you have heard of. Um and in the meeting before the meeting, do your know what is that they, they want now and make sure that you can solve it, know their highlights, perhaps uh uh latest uh talk that they uh participated in and then refer it to it during the conversation, come with a clear objective.

What would you consider as a win? What are you asking them to do and briefly introduce yourself? But then let them speak, you know, in between, of course, add your gold sentence but make sure that uh they are the one who do most of the talking. Um and, and make make sure to, to really uh give visibility to them. And of course, you know, the the follow up here is to, to really maintain the connection, social media attacks of your, of your prospects. If you see something interesting uh and, and to help and send kind of reports from time to time. Uh Here I added a very brief report uh from linkedin to show how the skills that are required for business development have changed over the years. Uh And now we kind of need more kind of cold calling sales and marketing, business strategy. These are kind of the new skills uh that, that perhaps business development people need. And that's kind of interesting in my view and I'm just gonna end by thanking you for listening.

I hope it was useful. Um And please do reach out on linkedin and I'm happy to send you some of the content here uh that perhaps you didn't catch or, or uh elaborate on anything else. So, thank you so much.