There are several instances where an alliance manager forms a partnership to create a joint solution for a customer to compensate for the lack of feature within their product. But later on, they find out that the product feature is in the company’s product roadmap. It results in the joint solution as being competitive, and often gets canceled.

If the alliance managers had the visibility into the product roadmaps at their respective companies, it would have saved them time and effort and the ability to redirect as needed to continue to grow the business.

As an alliance manager, create a joint solution plan that is aligned with the alliance partner’s strategies and synchronizes the plan with product development before instituting solution development and field execution. And then follow it up with one year plans so that investment is realized and committed to before entering into competitive situations that could marginalize the investment and create friction.