Onboard Your External Partners Like a Pro

Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

Taking a proactive approach to onboarding external partners for your company will go a long way towards ensuring a successful partnership.

Most founders and business leaders pick new partners, bring them on, and just dive into the work. The partners might be a financial organization, a sales brokerage or distributor, a shipping organization or contract manufacturer, or any external partner you want to bring on to help your company. 

We all know that time is money and all that, but the problem with barreling ahead with the work is that you are likely to skip the important step of setting expectations and priorities and aligning on what you’re trying to accomplish. This can create problems down the road, which is unfortunate because all that is required to set the table for a productive relationship can be done in a few hours at an “onboarding meeting” with your new partner.

Here’s how to structure and lead a three to four-hour onboarding meeting. 

Create a strategy

Start from the beginning and develop a joint strategy. This isn’t nice to know information; it’s need-to-know, especially if any roadblocks come up. Follow the strategic mapping process.

Know thyself. Assess your strengths and weaknesses. Do a full SWOT analysis of what this new partnership’s super powers consist of and where you need to shore up more expertise or resources. Be completely and totally and brutally honest here; this is no time for wishful thinking–just candid analysis. 

Know thy customer. Make sure your new partner really is clear on who the customer is. If your partner is a distributor, for example, or a sales broker, the customer might be the retailer; or perhaps your reach goes deeper and includes the consumer? Make sure you nail that picture. If you're onboarding a finance company, the customer might be you, in which case you may want to go deep with them on your financial picture. 

Know thy market. Share with your partner your understanding of your market and your competition. This topic might not matter as much to a finance partner as it would to a sales partner, so adjust the emphasis accordingly. For example, if I'm onboarding a sales broker and want them to focus on natural retailers rather than large grocery chains, this is where I would cover that topic. Or, if you are a service company, you and your new partner can study the competition together to pinpoint where your white space is. 

Why do we exist? This part of the meeting involves understanding why the partnership exists and what it should accomplish. Here again, the purpose for a sales broker might be to increase awareness and sales in your chosen markets. The purpose of your relationship with a distributor might be to manage inventory so that you’re never out of stock or come up with novel or customized ways to supply customers. 

What are our vision, purpose and values? The best relationships are never purely transactional, and in purpose-driven companies you will want to be just as aligned with an external partner as you are with your internal team. Determine the values with you which you can align, such as candor, communication or above the line thinking as often as possible. 

What are our OKRs? Finally, establish your objectives for the relationship for the next 90 days or 180 days. Keep in mind that your OKRs for the first 90 days may differ from ongoing objectives, prioritize your top two or three objectives with your partner and establish key results or KPIs for each objective. 

Set rhythms and KPIs

The first part of your onboarding meeting will take 2-3 hours. The second part will not take as long but is also very important: how will you collaborate and establish a rhythm in your work. By rhythm I mean how often are you going to meet? Who will be included in the call and how will you set the agenda? What data points will you review? Will the call be 45 minutes or more like 90 minutes? You may need to pick a rhythm and adjust as necessary, but be super intentional about sticking to your schedule and following your agenda. (Read here about setting up and running meetings for success.) 

Don’t forget to set up your next strategy meeting–that’s right, the next one. Every three to four months, meet with your partner to reset on the relationship to see how the relationship is going, what’s working and what’s not working, and adjust your strategy accordingly, just as you would with your internal team.

The quarterly strategic meeting is the best place to decide how to create a weekly rhythm, determine what KPIs to track, decide who leads the meetings and who should attend. Don’t take the lazy way out and try to wing it because that will fail to make you and your partner’s expectations clear, and clarity of expectations is critical to a partnership that will succeed and last. 

Setting expectations and following through on them will pay significant dividends in reduced misunderstandings, lower drama, and higher performance and return. It will also keep the energy level high, which is vital to long-term relationships. If you're able to do some of this strategy-setting work by yourself before you take on a partner, by all means do so. Then you can use your strategic mapping to interview potential partners or do reference checks for your partners. 

Let me know what you’re doing to create healthy alignment with your external partners.

Sincerely,

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All credit to my ghostwriting partner, Dave Moore, who is instrumental in getting my thoughts out in a coherent manner & into these blogs. Thanks Dave!