Education Partnerships and Business Alliances Article

0808_ecpEducation Channel Partner published a story I wrote about partnerships for companies that serve the education market. Whether you are a textbook publisher, an education technology developer, a fellow management consultant, or a reseller/dealer I hope you will find some useful ideas in the article. Think of it as Business Development 101 for education.

Too many partnerships fail because the partners didn’t work through all the questions they needed to address individually and mutually. This article attempts to lay out a process for evaluating partnerships and a partnership taxonomy to help determine what kinds of partnerships are right for your company. It draws on my experiences at Apple, Chancery, Pearson, and Harcourt.

From the blurb:

Why do some partnerships succeed and others crash and burn? In profitable K-12 partnerships, companies carefully structure the relationship and know exactly what kind of partner they need. Here’s a guide to the elements of a successful partnership and a taxonomy of the kinds of K-12 business alliances out there.

The title – Making Channel Partnerships Work – is a bit misleading since the article covers more than channel partners. I address co-marketing and a couple of other topics outside of channels.

I’m really pleased to be working with the team over at Education Channel Partner. Later this year they are publishing another article from me on data driven selling. That article expands and develops the ideas noted in this post from last spring – Data Driven Selling – Quick Start Guide.

Link to the full partnership article.