PhD

PartnerHacker Weekend 09/10: Try a New Perspective

A quick recap of the PhD from this week:

Recently published:


Act as if

One of Freud's best students, psychologist Alfred Adler, developed a technique to help his clients, "act as if." It was a type of mental framing and acting that allowed people to take a different perspective. (By the way, Freud ended up parting with Adler because he felt Adler was too practical and not theoretical enough in his approach.)

We can get stuck in the ways we view the world. It is hard to break out and take a new perspective. But when we act as if something were true, it can force us to think and act in a new way.

When it comes to partnerships, it can be challenging to grasp the partnerships ecosystem approach and how it differs from previous models.

But try this: act as if partnerships and ecosystems were the only approaches you had available.

What if you no longer had a traditional sales team? How could you leverage partnerships to build a thriving ecosystem and grow your company?

The exercise isn't meant to encourage you to get rid of your sales team. It's merely an exercise to get you to think outside of the box. What if everything you did had to come through partnerships?

How might you think about integrations, agencies, co-marketing, co-selling, and co-innovating?

If you didn't have sales or marketing, your customers would have to find you living somewhere in their ecosystem. You wouldn't be going directly to your customers and telling them about your product; you'd be finding partnerships that allow your product to flow naturally into their lives.

Thankfully, partnerships are bolstered by many other efforts and orgs in the company. But next time you struggle to understand a partner-centric world, try acting as if it were already true.

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