External partnerships
Generate meaningful insights about your relationships
Fostering authentic, ongoing business development and alliance relationships
Our platform allows teams to foster authentic, ongoing relationships with the people they need to connect with in less time and with less effort. The platform offers immediate feedback about important decisions that is relevant, contextualised, highly targeted and in near real-time.
Clients in business development and alliance management teams use the platform to answer important issues around strategically build relationships and to develop, identify and expand new business opportunities. For example, for organisations which have recently gone through the search, evaluation and negotiation processes our client explore important questions such as:
“How did we handle the evaluation process?”
“Do you have any comments about how we handled the negotiation process?”
“Compared to other large companies in the sector, did we execute the onboarding process effectively?”
The initial question is designed to elicit a range of responses. We collate those responses and, where necessary, we have a conversation with the client about the best approach to build on those responses with follow up questions. So, for example, responses to the question:
“How did we handle the evaluation process?”
may elicit responses from “Really well” through to “Very poorly”. The follow up questions will then be framed to drill-down into the aspects of that process that the respondent thought that the client has done well and where the respondent felt that the client’s team performed less well.
Likewise, responses to the question:
“Is our communication with you timely and effective?”
will range from negative through to positive. Respondents who give negative feedback will be encouraged to take part in a deeper conversation about their issues with the client’s communication and the steps that the client could take to address those issues.
These follow up questions will generate more feedback to be interpreted. Thus, some respondents who rated the evaluation process poorly may have issues with the speed of decision-making, others may have issues with the amount of feedback given to them at the end of the evaluation process.
Confidentiality and anonymity
One of the key advantages of using our platform to listen to your external partners is that we guarantee both confidentiality and anonymity if the participant prefers those options. In our experience those partners offering the most insightful feedback and that with the most learning opportunities are far more likely to ask for confidentiality and anonymity than other participants just in case their remarks impact their relationship with the client.
Initiating the fact-finding with a path-finding survey
We have significant expertise in running online surveys for our clients. Our platform can be effectively linked with an initial survey to identify issues and concerns that can then be focused on in the follow-up conversations.
The Situation-Behaviour-Impact (SBI) model maximises the actionable feedback
The Platform uses the SBI model Developed by the Center for Creative Leadership and now used by leading organisations across the world. The SBI framework has recently been analysed in an article in the Harvard Business Review. According to the article the SBI model allows teams to "address both strengths and weaknesses in a clear, specific, professional and caring way". The SBI model is designed to identify issues that you can do something about:
Situation Have there been specific situations where the client's performance has been sub-optimal. When did it occur? Where did it occur?
Behaviour What exactly happened and how did the client's team or organisation act or fail to act that was less than optimal?
Impact What was the impact of this situation on the participant's team or organisation?
When we structure feedback in this way, your people will understand precisely what is being commented on, and why. And when we outline the impact of their behaviour on others, we're giving them the chance to reflect on their actions, and think about what they need to change. The tool also helps you avoid making assumptions that could upset the other people or team and damage your relationship with them.
The Platform is highly targeted to your specific needs
At the outset of the engagement your goals are broken down into an initial series of questions that are sent to participants by email, text, social media or by phone.
The questions and the means of communication (email, text, social media, etc) is tailored to each specific recipient.
The questions can be triggered by a particular decision-point or event, for example immediately before or after a meeting.
The feedback is collated by Silico and shared with the client immediately.
Once the feedback has been assessed with the client, tailored follow-up questions can be devised and sent to individual participants. This create a series of ongoing, one-on-one, conversations digging deeper in the key issues raised by each participant's feedback.
Because the respondent is only asked one question at a time,the process is quick and can be completed anywhere and at any time. The platform is ideal for engaging meaningfully with always busy, on-the-move and time-pressured executives in the sector.