Dede Haas is the Channel Strategist for DLH Services in the Washington DC area in the USA. Being in channels since 1985, Dede is an experienced channel expert who helps small and medium sized businesses build channel sales teams and channel programs. 

In this episode you will hear Dede explain what a channel is and how OEM and licensing can fit into the description of channel sales. Dede brings experience to the conversation from large companies like Intel and smaller companies. 

Alignment is an essential element for success in any type of business collaboration. However, alignment is an abstract concept that is somehow difficult to comprehend. People often approach it in a closed way: we are aligned or we are not. 

Michael Taylor is one of the founders of SchellingPoint. SchellingPoint provides a tool for measuring the degree of alignment before, during, and after any collaborative effort involving two or more individuals - providing a mathematical calculation of their like-mindedness, and highlighting the potential problem areas where their interests diverge. 

In the conversation with Michael we are exploring alignment optimization for business collaborations. In Today’s episode you will hear why it is important to understand where we are aligned and where are not (yet) aligned and how we can measure that to improve alignment and increase the success rates of our business collaborations. 

In this episode we are diving into the legal aspects of alliances. Luuk van der Laan is a Dutch lawyer who is specialized in alliances and collaborations. Luuk is an independant lawyer who works across Europe with a broad set of customers, startups, corporations and with a couple of European platforms. 

Francine Allaire spent most of her career in sales and partner development positions working for global companies in high tech and in consulting. Francine uses social media quite actively as a communication and marketing channel. In 2010 Francine was named by Forbes as one of the top 20 most influential women on Twitter for marketing, business and technology advice.

Actually it is through Twitter that Francine and I first met a few years ago.

In our conversation we discuss partnerships and alliances and we dive deeper into collaboration of all kinds. Francine highlights why she is convinced that collaboration is the new workplace business model. She goes so far as to say that in light of what she calls the ‘new normal’ in business, effective collaboration is essential to how well an organization (big or small) will perform over time. That includes internal collaboration across functional teams, departments or business units, as well as external collaboration with potential partners, contractors, suppliers, customers, and even at times with competitors.

Francine shares her 6 critical success factors she looks for in any type of collaboration:

Norma Watenpaugh is the founding principle of Phoenix Consulting Group and she is one of my own first alliance partners. Norma explains in this episode how she created a network of independent consultants when establishing Phoenix Consulting Group. 

In creating the network Norma looks at how her partners work in real life and what practical experience they bring to the network. The trust factor is also a huge factor in selecting partners as controls diminishes when distances grow. 

Amber Ludwig helps authors, speakers and coaches build their business online. She brought her experience together into the company with the great name “Nog Guts No Glory”.

For Amber business collaboration is in the simplest form two people working together towards a common goal. In the podcast Amber shares how she started her own business based upon collaboration in working with others to grow the company through referral sales. A second example of collaboration that Amber shares is how she helps multi-author books become best sellers on Amazon.

This weeks episode is a little bit different. Firstly because my guest in this episode is a returning guest: Anoop Nathwani. Secondly this episode is a bit different as with Anoop returning we take a different approach towards the podcast. This episode is not an interview, it is a free forward conversation about relationships and alliances.

Greg Hickman knows all about mobile marketing and in this episode of the Collaborative Business Podcast he is my guest. In his blog and podcast Greg teaches small businesses about mobile marketing and earlier this week Greg published his latest book on SMS marketing.

Greg explains that for everything you do online the chances are high that it will be read or listened to on a mobile device. That makes that basically everything is or can be mobile. We discuss mobile collaboration and Greg explains how mobile played a role while collaborating with his web developer on his new site.

Kim Tremblay is an alliance marketer at Schneider Electric, who has been specializing in the area of alliances since 2000. In today’s episode you will hear Kim share her experience and you will learn how the alliance marketing field changed due to the rise of social media.

In this episode I am exploring business collaboration with Chris Ducker. Chris is specialized in outsourcing and runs three businesses based in the Philippines. Chris explains in this podcast how collaboration is about relationship and how that comes back to running his business. Even running traditional “brick and mortar” businesses, Chris explains how his first priority is the relationship with his people that will translate back into the success of his business.....