The One Question That Will Transform Your Partnership Strategy

In the complex world of business partnerships, companies often get caught in a cycle of pursuing relationships based on brand recognition, market presence, or simply who seems interesting to work with. However, this approach frequently leads to disconnected collaborations that fail to deliver meaningful results for either the business or its customers.

The Common Partnership Misalignment

Many organisations proudly display a collection of partner logos on their websites, yet these relationships often contribute little to the actual customer experience or business growth. This disconnect stems from a fundamental misalignment in how partnerships are approached:

• Companies prioritise who they want to partner with rather than who their customers need them to partner with
• Partnership decisions are made in isolation from customer journey mapping
• Collaborations are pursued for visibility rather than functional integration
• The actual workflow of customers is overlooked when identifying potential partners

The result is predictable: partnerships that look impressive but deliver minimal value, creating what amounts to digital wall decorations rather than strategic business assets.

One Question That Changes Everything

There's a remarkably simple yet powerful question that can transform your approach to partnerships:

"What product or service do your customers use before and after they use yours?"

This single question shifts the partnership paradigm from company-centric to customer-centric thinking. By understanding the complete workflow of your customers, you can identify the natural integration points where partnerships create genuine value.

Why This Question Works

When you examine what your customers use before and after your solution, you gain critical insights:

1. You identify actual friction points in the customer journey that partnerships could address
2. You discover who your ideal partners already are, even if relationships haven't been formalised
3. You reveal gaps in your ecosystem that, when filled, could create a more seamless experience
4. You align partnerships with genuine customer needs rather than arbitrary business development goals

This approach grounds your partnership strategy in reality rather than aspirations, focusing on creating tangible value rather than superficial associations.

Building a Customer-Centric Partnership Ecosystem

Moving to a customer-journey focused partnership strategy involves several key steps:

1. Map Your Customer's Workflow

Take time to understand the complete journey your customers go through, both before they engage with your solution and after they've implemented it. What problems are they solving immediately before they need you? What do they do with the outputs or results from your product?

2. Identify Natural Integration Points

Look for the handoff moments where customers move between different tools or services. These transition points often involve friction, data transfer challenges, or workflow disruptions that partnerships could address.

3. Prioritise Partners Based on Customer Impact

Rather than pursuing the biggest names in adjacent spaces, focus on the solutions that most directly connect to your customers' workflows. Sometimes the most valuable partner isn't the most recognisable but the one that solves the adjacent problem most effectively.

4. Build Partnerships That Create Seamless Experiences

Great partnerships don't just generate leads for each other; they create integrated experiences that make both solutions more valuable. Focus on technical integrations, smooth data flows, and unified experiences rather than just co-marketing activities.

From Random Acts to Strategic Ecosystem

The difference between random partnership activities and a strategic ecosystem is intentionality and customer focus. When partnerships are formed with a clear understanding of how they fit into the customer's overall workflow, they become force multipliers rather than marketing decorations.

In practice, this often means:

• Having fewer, deeper partnerships rather than many superficial ones
• Focusing on functional integration over brand association
• Measuring partnership success by customer impact metrics
• Building relationships that enhance core product value

Quality Over Quantity

One of the most valuable realisations that comes from this approach is that you likely need fewer partners than you think. When partnerships are aligned with actual customer workflows, a small number of deep, well-executed collaborations typically delivers more value than dozens of loosely connected relationships.

As we've seen with clients at Hockey Stick Advisory, shifting from random acts of partnering to building strategically aligned ecosystems creates partnerships that genuinely scale and deliver meaningful business outcomes.

Putting It Into Practice

To apply this customer-centric approach to your partnership strategy:

1. Conduct customer interviews focusing specifically on their workflows before and after using your solution
2. Review support tickets and feature requests to identify integration needs
3. Map your existing partnerships against the customer journey to identify gaps and misalignments
4. Prioritise potential partnerships based on where they fit in the workflow and the friction they could reduce

Remember that the goal isn't to have the most impressive list of partners but to create the most seamless experience for your customers through strategic collaborations.

Moving Forward With Purpose

By grounding your partnership strategy in the actual needs and workflows of your customers, you move from pursuing partnerships that merely look good to developing relationships that actively drive business value. This customer-centric approach ensures that every partnership has a clear purpose and measurable impact.

The next time you're considering a new partnership opportunity, start by asking that one essential question: "What do our customers use before and after our solution?" The answer will guide you toward partnerships that truly matter.

Does your current partner strategy start with your customers' workflows, or is it driven by other factors? We'd love to hear about your experiences building partnerships that genuinely enhance the customer journey.