Hands up who’d like a million-dollar partnership? Of course you do. It’s like the Olympic gold medal that shows everyone you’ve made it. You’d get bragging rights among your colleagues and peers and envy from your competitors. But I wonder if any of them would like to make the journey you’ve travelled to get to that million-dollar partnership.
At a conference last year, the team from the Fred Hollows Foundation talked about their multi-million-dollar partnership with Specsavers and how it started with a $25 donation. What we didn’t hear about were the countless hours of relationship nurturing, uncertainty, trial and error that built the partnership.
Travel enthusiasts claim it’s more about the journey than the destination. But anyone who’s got up at 4 am to fly Ryanair in a windowless seat may disagree. Like the Olympic medallists, the journey to million-dollar partnerships is challenging, with pitfalls, disappointments, hope and hard work along the way. Sometimes you just need to go back to basics and start again.
What does the journey to million-dollar partnerships take?
1. Clarity
Clarity on your ambition, your value and what you’re building towards ensures you go to market positioned for strategic, high-value investment. Unlike that motivational book The Secret, you can’t just visualise million-dollar partnerships, and they miraculously appear.
You need to build the strategic and commercial clarity required to scale partnerships with confidence. Otherwise, you’ll get stuck with a lot of low-value, transactional partnerships that suck up your time and energy.
Clarity requires going back to basics and putting in place:
• A clearly defined objective for corporate partnerships (not just filling an urgent funding gap). You may need brand awareness, skills, marketing, access to new audiences, and help with your technology. Identify how corporate partners can advance your mission, and the money will follow.
• A clearly articulated value proposition for corporates. Why you, what makes you special, why should they care about your cause right now?
• Visibility of your most valuable partnership assets. Understand your real strengths and why they are valuable to a corporate partner.
• A pricing or valuation framework. Know your value and the levers you can tweak to improve your pricing range.
If this isn’t in place yet, you’re not behind; you’re simply at the beginning of the million-dollar partnership growth journey.
2. Million-dollar partnerships also need alignment.
Not all partners are equal. Some will simply want to make a philanthropic donation or buy some quick goodwill. That’s fine- not every budding skier wants to throw themselves down a slope at 80km per hour to grab gold.
Million-dollar partnerships are built on deep alignment, where brand, audience, values and commercial objectives intersect. You’re aiming to become part of a team that works together to solve big social issues and create value for everyone. Like the best sporting teams, you need the right mix of talent, skills and commitment.
Partnership success requires:
• A shortlist of priority industries aligned to your mission and values
• A defined Perfect Partner Profile
• A framework to assess risk and reputational fit
• Research and profiling processes to guide outreach
Without the right alignment, prospecting becomes inefficient, opportunities are misaligned, and partnerships struggle to grow.
3. The journey to million-dollar partnerships also requires commercial readiness.
Corporates invest when they see credibility, capability and mutual value clearly articulated. Commercial readiness means you have the right tools, materials and skills to convert opportunities into meaningful partnerships.
When Australian skater Steven Bradbury won a gold medal, everyone laughed and said it was pure good luck. But that seeming overnight success had been over 10 years in the making. Years when he’d competed in events, won lesser medals, and put in the hard slog to make lots of finals. He overcame a broken neck and a horrific accident where he almost bled to death when a skater’s blade sliced through his leg. He made it to the Olympic final with a plan and plenty of determination. Steven Bradbury wasn’t the headline star with a glamorous brand, but he won gold because he was ready to seize the opportunity when it opened up.
Do you currently have:
• A corporate credentials document and a compelling narrative for corporate partners?
• Professional proposal templates ready to adapt?
• Confidence opening corporate conversations?
• Structured discovery frameworks?
• Negotiation and deal-structuring capability?
The opportunity is out there- you just need to be commercially ready to unlock it.
The journey to million-dollar partnerships has different stages, with each building on the other. You can’t rely on luck or just visualising that $1mln target: partnerships are built through structure, strategy and commercial confidence. Learn more about our process for building million-dollar partnerships here. Everyone with an Olympic medal has a story of their journey, from challenges, hope, hard work, to success. As we prepare for the FIA conference next week and present the award for Best Strategic Partnership, are you ready to do what it takes to meet us on the podium?