The document provides guidance on creating and maintaining effective business partnerships in the information technology industry, outlining strategies for establishing relationships with key decision makers, leveraging sales teams, developing engagement plans, and tracking partnerships using a relationship management system to identify problems and generate revenue leads. It also includes examples of IBM's approach to sales, marketing, communications, and channel enablement to support partnerships. The goal is to help technology providers identify partners' capabilities and competitively pursue major procurements.

1. Creating & Maintaining an Effective Business Partnership in
the Information Technology Industry
Engagement Management Thought Plan prepared for an
IBM Business Partner’s Route to Market Program
By : Teresita A Krueger
13 June 2011

2. How to drive success – at the 1,000 ft Level
Goal: Develop the relationships with key decision makers so that technology
providers will identify and bring your capabilities into all go-to-market executions
and credibly compete for major procurements
How to proceed:
ü Establish the BR (business relationship) strategy, based on your experiential knowledge
of key initiatives (e.g.storage, virtualization, servers, software development, IT
consulting)
ü Leverage the local / global sales teams
ü Educate your technology partner’s firm, sales teams / client executives so they are
comfortable with the subject matter expertise from the integrator
ü Develop call / engagement plan with the all account sales teams (may include events
and customer visits)
ü Use global collateral – translated to interests of technology partners, where necessary
ü Include your own solution and services related content in websites and link backs
ü Track, measure appropriately in a Business Partner Relationship Mgmt System
Remember, the value proposition as the relationship expert = identify the unique problem to
be solved to generated leads and ultimately revenue.
2
Confidential

3. Action Driven Plan as a Process
The elements of a successful relationship management system
Out Reach
Align &
• Identify special set Renew
of connections, • Programmatic &
Define events, meetings Managed plan
• Put your “currency” for Subject Matter Continuous
Experts conveyor of
into action with
upcoming client • Increase match credibility
Target deals, client between market
executive briefings opportunity & Biz
• Establish Prtners market
“constituencies” • Couple other
focus.
partner initiatives
• Create critical • Leverage the Exec
need of offerings partners
Focus to current
• Direct link of solutions
portfolio
relationship &
“hard revenue
goals”

4. Timeline overlay with Process
Putting that plan into deliverables
Progressing
First 30 to 60 to 90
beyond 120
60 days days
days
• Partner Team • Consistent and • Readiness and
Profiled Relevant Enablement
• Manage Partner team as a portfolio
• What do I want to achieve?
Communication • Engaged at the right level
• Communications and reviews
• Mutual commitments – agreed upon
• Gather intelligence– perception survey • Value add, growth oriented, proactive
action plans, milestones documented
• Where are the gaps
•Desire for growth in relationship
• Define ideal relationship (driven by customer demand)
• Close gaps
• Identify added partner ecosystem value
proposition

5. Looking Ahead
• When is the next milestone?
o Tied to quarterly sales, Gross Profit, new
and extended sales - lead generation
• What are the expected deliverables?
o Measured against increased market
penetration, % of revenue attainment
• Known risks and issues
o What is the investment timeline for these
issues?
• What are the immediate next steps?

6. Appendix
• IBM Sales, Marketing & Communications
• Supplemental documents – Resources, My Scorecard
• Contact information
Teresita is an Information Technology Specialist and accomplished Program Manager experienced in Public
Sector industries. Teresita has spend over 15 years, in the IBM Corporation influencing line of business
executives by providing insights to optimal utilization of emerging technologies along with business and
social implications.
She is now with www.invivovision.com - an entrepreneurial world class think- tank of women and minority
scientists, engineers and educators 8A certified, and Tier 2 SW Reseller IBM Business Partner

7. Sales, Marketing and Communications
example: IBM
• At IBM’s core is a set of marketing materials • IBM’s Route-to-Market Strategy is
and sales tools designed to support phases of encapsulated in message creation:: the
their SSM – Signature Selling Method foundation for marketing execution and
sales enablement, articulated in a standard
plan, that is industry specific and used for
partner evaluation
Top Critical Success
Factors
Industry Value Creation Communications
Pipeline
Point of View • Solution Design • Demand Generation
development and
and Ramp-up • Architecture Framework • Lead Generation management
definitions • Demo • Thought Leadership
• Influencer/Analyst
• Whitepapers Customer facing
• Assets & Collateral materials,
mapped to the
• Presentations, case SSM process
studies, flash demos
• Education
• Awareness
• Internal/external
Sales
enablement and Channel Enablement
internal & • Cross Selling, Up selling
external
communications
11
Ref: ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/partners/pdf/SignatureSalesOverview.pdf
http://www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/dinamic-content/media/Yvonne/IBM%20Route%20to%20Market%20Strategy.pdf

8. Dependencies and Resources
Know what resources you can exploit, be sensitive to dependencies & politics