Rating: 
Summary: Perfect for senior management
Review: 5 stars. This book details the step-by-step process to creating revenue-delivering partnership. Our entire management and board got a copy of this book from our vp of sales. Now we are understand the dependencies of creating partnerships, but how it impacts revenue. I constantly recommend it to others.
Rating:
Summary: "Get results. Time or money"
Review: A "How-to" book, written in order, with liberal does of history thrown it. What a treasure!
As a "honcho" (in my own mind) I enjoyed measuring the author's premises against my own real world experiences. I wish I'd read Sarah's book first.
This book was written to help its readers get results, which for many of us means money and or time. If this approach doesn't work for you, then even the consolation prize is a good deal, i.e., minimal wasted time and money.
It is not a quick read. You have to slow down and study. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: "Get results. Time or money"
Review: A "How-to" book, written in order, with liberal does of history thrown it. What a treasure!
As a "honcho" (in my own mind) I enjoyed measuring the author's premises against my own real world experiences. I wish I'd read Sarah's book first.
This book was written to help its readers get results, which for many of us means money and or time. If this approach doesn't work for you, then even the consolation prize is a good deal, i.e., minimal wasted time and money.
It is not a quick read. You have to slow down and study. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: "Get results. Time or money"
Review: A "How-to" book, written in order, with liberal does of history thrown it. What a treasure!
As a "honcho" (in my own mind) I enjoyed measuring the author's premises against my own real world experiences. I wish I'd read Sarah's book first.
This book was written to help its readers get results, which for many of us means money and or time. If this approach doesn't work for you, then even the consolation prize is a good deal, i.e., minimal wasted time and money.
It is not a quick read. You have to slow down and study. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Keep It Simple and Straightforward
Review: A first class, objective and fresh look at simplifying strategic alliances. Ms. Gerdes has brought it all together in easily understandable terms with outstanding examples that can be adapted to any business in any industry. Superbly written and based on first-hand experience, this will clearly become "the authoritative piece" on creating successful partnerships.
Rating:
Summary: Alliance Development Clarified for Novices and Veterans!
Review: Alliance development can be accomplished seat of the pants in a strong economy, but when the difficult times hit, they will probably fall apart. This is a book that can help anyone looking to forge strong alliances today and manage them through the storm of internal and external factors that might threaten your hard work. Sarah has the practical experience and techniques to bring new ideas to a veteran while clarifying what to do next for the novice. The case stories are relevant to the context, crossing all types of partnerships and applicable for any type of business. An important read for anyone considering construction or development of strategic alliances.
Rating:
Summary: Read before you write
Review: As a retired CEO and now consultant to start ups, I purchased this book after hearing Sarah speak at an entreprenuer forum. It doesn't dissappoint. It's the only book I've read the includes a translation dictionary of what a company says to stall you based on the stage of discussion. I also liked the Agreement Matrix, defining all the types of agreements, when they are used, the pros, cons, and dependencies. I'm referring my clients to it daily.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe I'm old fashioned
Review: But I liked this book. I liked the examples, could easily follow the logic and thought the sections on managing executives was great (managing the fear factor chpt 3). Gerdes tells it like it is at the management level when it comes to supporting partnerships-but the best part is she details how to address each and every concern about a partnership-from four different vantage points. The section on partner ranking is both funny and unnerving. (See what they said versus what they meant chapter 6). I've heard a lot of these statements or variations, and now in hindsight, completely agree with Gerdes' translations. I only wish she would have done this type of jargon translations for each and every type of partner development meeting, but in fairness, she does do it for two of the three phases she describes in chapter 6. I also would have liked her to spend more time going through a few of the models, but at least the book has enough examples to get the point across on how to use them for both a service and product company. As ours has both, it was invaluable that the services part was included. Most (all?) books typically cover product-based companies only, and forget the rest of us who make a living selling services.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't use your money for this kind of books
Review: I bought this book because I'm really interested in improving my skill in creating and managing partnerships for my company and I was attracted by the positive reviews on Amazon.Com. Reading the first pages I was unpleasantly surprise by the unbelievable miserable level of this book. I suspect that these reviewers that claim to be CEO and top manager of Fortune 500 companies are just friends and relatives of Sarah. For example, I check the city where of one of these "CEO" is supposed to live and discovered that it doesn't even exist.
When you read the book you understand while Sarah needs to push in such unfair way her book (self reviewing). I'm not a CEO but sincerely I recommend everybody to look somewhere else for a good book. This is not a good book at all.
Rating:
Summary: Spineless Imbecile
Review: I don't know who the brain surgeons are that posted the last 2 reviews, but they are clearly people who haven't read fortune magazine, possibly live under a rock, or have a personal beef with Ms. Gerdes; regardless they clearly can't spell or write in comprehensible grammer, thus anyone basing an opinion upon these reviews would be foolish. Ms. Gerdes' references to Uniglobe, Network Appliance, and a whole host of companies are very real. For the brain dead that wrote the last two reviews lacking any substance, perhaps you should spend the money to purchase periodicals that highlight NetApp as one of the best places to work - it is a real company. Further, the last time I checked people like Gary Charlwood (Uniglobe) and Dan Warmenhoven (NetApp) are real, very successful CEOs that clearly contributed to the book. For anyone else that questions the value of this book, do as I did, go to a book story (local store, etc.) and read the 1st chapter or 2 for free OR read any of the excerps that have been published online. You'll find that Ms. Gerdes has done more with this one book to outline the realities behind alliances and how to be successful therein than anyone else in the industry. Our company owns several copies now and it is manadatory reading. It is a shame that people like the last 2 provide so little depth in their analysis of the book, yet have such scathing things to say. Experience tells any savvy business professional that the world is full of people that complain, yet have no answers or value to add of their own. Hopefully review boards like this one will police themselves and discourage people that add no value from contributing garbage.
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