Tapping into the vested interest of your ecosystem.

Every company, no matter its size or industry, has an ecosystem — a web of companies and people whose success depends, at least to some degree, on your success. Think suppliers, customers, strategic partners, manufacturers, employees, stockholders — all stakeholders in your success. They want you to win. It makes sense — if your company is failing, your customers can’t get the support or product updates they need; your vendors’ revenues fall and their accounts payable could be in jeopardy; your employees’ jobs are at greater risk, and so on. Everyone in your ecosystem is pulling for your success. The question, then, is ‘What is your organization doing to encourage and harvest the capabilities of these critical elements of your ecosystem?’.

What we’ve discovered is that too often our clients miss an opportunity to involve their ecosystem in solving difficult problems. In the backdrop of today’s environment, we’ve found that our clients are working harder than ever to increase sales while doing all they can to reduce, or at least contain, costs. How can your organization use its ecosystem for the benefit of all? In short, think boldly and creatively. Lumina is encouraging its clients to use the current environment to creatively address their business issues hand-in-hand with the members of their ecosystem. Perhaps now more than any other time in history, the companies and individuals in your ecosystem are thinking more deeply about how they can help you — acting not out of charity, but out of their clear understanding that if they want to be successful, they need to help make you successful.

The first steps in moving into a meaningful dialog with your ecosystem partner is understanding their motivation. Sure, all of your suppliers want you to buy more stuff — but it goes way beyond that. What is it that’s driving their business forward — not just short-term revenue, but strategically moving them forward. Perhaps they have a critical product or technology transition; perhaps they have excess inventory because of cancelled orders; maybe they’ve promised Wall Street they would enter a new market or geography. As with most meaningful relationships, you must first seek to understand the needs of your partner. From there, you can devise a strategy to help them help you.

For example, we were working with a small software company that was struggling with sales, despite a superior product and competitive price point. The company needed capital to build its infrastructure in order to increase sales — but outside funding was not an option. This is where their ecosystem became a critical part of the solution. In this case there was a major potential distribution channel partner whose future offerings were going to depend on this software company. There was also a prospective customer pipeline that would benefit greatly from their new software. However, these prospective customers didn’t have the internal resources to migrate their software, and didn’t have the budget to hire outside resources. The solution: use the marketing budget and name-recognition of the large channel partner to promote the new software; and use the customer’s existing software maintenance budget to offset license and deployment costs of the new software platform. In the end, the software company’s sales took off, the channel partner was able to launch a new product line with a large pipeline of business, and the customers could use their existing budget to get the new software that they needed for their organization. A little creativity and cooperation helped everyone address their short-term goals and move forward with their long-term strategy.

How can you use your ecosystem to help solve your business’ key challenges? Here are ten things to keep in mind as you strive to put your ecosystem to work for the benefit of all

  1. Be sensitive. You must clearly understand the short-term challenges and mid-term strategies of those in your ecosystem — what’s keeping them up at night and what promises and vision are they communicating to their stakeholders? Don’t do anything until you clearly understand this.
  2. Be meaningful. You must create a tactical a strategic win for those that participate — short-term sales for your suppliers are great, but not if it derails them from their core business strategy. Sure you need wins upfront, but those wins need to be taking you on a trajectory that’s meaningful to the company in the long-run.
  3. Be a connector. You need to find creative ways of connecting your ecosystem — the only thing all of these people and companies have in common is you. How are you going to connecting them together in a meaningful way?
  4. Be up high. You need to capture the imagination of high-level decision-makers. Your not going to ‘plugging into some program’ — you are the program. This kind of thinking needs the authority and imagination of the executives in your ecosystem. Don’t side-step your day-to-day contact, but don’t stop there or you’ll never move your idea from a thought to an action.
  5. Be creative. This is not a time to just do more of the same. Brainstorm. Meditate. Pretend that you don’t know the ‘rules’ and think big. Today, no idea is too wacky to consider.
  6. Be courageous. This is not a time to be timid. Boldly engage the key decision-makers in your ecosystem with your ideas.
  7. Be a leader. Be flexible, but have a plan. The single biggest thing that you can do to improve your odds of success is to have a concrete plan. It may not be the final plan or the plan that gets implemented, but you need to show that you’ve thought things through. In business, a blank piece of paper is a terrible conversation starter.
  8. Be ready to act on your plan. The last thing you want to do when you get the head nod is to say ‘uh, well, can I get back to you?’.
  9. Be resourceful. If someone in your ecosystem, such as one of your suppliers or customers, says ‘no’, look further down your list. Who else could benefit from a deeper relationship and commitment from your company?
  10. Be thinking about other resources that can help — not just money. Hard cash is great, but it isn’t the only thing. Suppliers can offer marketing assistance, better payment terms, better demo programs, joint sales calls, pre-sales support — keep thinking. Customers can be great spokespeople at your conferences, offer to make introductions to other prospects, host executive round tables — keep thinking.

Partner funded development is a great way to involve your entire ecosystem in your success and the success of those involved. The process of creating a winning web of relationships will last beyond the original initiatives and create relationships that can never be duplicated by any competitor. Your ecosystem is waiting – now is the time to move boldly forward.

Dan McCormick is the Managing Partner of Lumina’s Denver office.