#Partnerships shouldn't feel like sales, they should feel like a real relationship. You can and should be yourself.
While launching partnerships, you’re in a delicate situation when you’re playing on both teams.
You may be tempted to 🙌 to be on one side one day and on the partner’s side the next day.
But what builds a bridge between teams is authenticity.
Here is a great explanation from Lauren Hoffman who’s built partnership function in On Deck, one of the largest and best known founder communities:
💬 You can really be yourself. Obviously, you need to read the room and be appropriate, but you can and should be yourself.
Ideally you are only representing or building partnerships on behalf of a company that you fully stand behind and are speaking honestly for. But no one wants to work with a polished stiff salesperson.
It shouldn't feel like sales, it should feel like a real relationship or some of these partnerships have turned into real friendships.
And you can come as yourself, when you don't know the answers to things, you can admit that, You can, obviously when it's appropriate, make a distinction of when your opinion differs from the opinion or the approach of your company at large.
And you can really be there on a team with your counterpart at the other company. You're on your own team, and then you build this new little ad hoc team with your counterpart to build a good partnership.”
💡 It takes a bit of courage to apply this in partnerships.
But nothing can beat authenticity and this is what ultimately wins partners.
👇 Watch/ read the entire episode
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