As the pop-psychology quote states “80% of the barriers to your success are internal”.
There is an Irish joke about a tourist lost in the countryside stopping to ask a local for directions to Killarney. The local quickly responded, “if I were going to Killarney, I wouldn’t start from here”.
As you are building your partner program, it’s essential to understand where you are and what are your company’s internal barriers to your success. For your efforts to deliver the best results, you need to identify and address partner sabotaging behavior.
Some of the partnering sabotaging behavior are as follows:
1) Your Company’s Culture / Leadership Style
•What is your company’s leadership style on the scale from controlling to collaborative?
• How does your company view partners on the scale from ‘necessary evil’ to ‘a welcome extension to your team‘?
•What is your company’s management approach to partners on the scale of pushing to supporting?
• Does your company feel that it is offering such a fantastic opportunity for partners such that you can dictate terms? Alternatively, do you recognize that partners have their own business goals separate from yours?
• Is your company’s attitude aligned with the partner relationships you require for your business?
2) Your Sales Approach
•What is your company’s sales approach on the scale of ‘strong individual salespeople’ to ‘strong sales process and methodologies?
•Does your company have a highly competitive sales culture in the team?
• Does your company have a high turnover of salespeople?
• OR does your company put greater emphasis on the sales team and process?
•Does your company tolerant the maverick ‘superstar’ who doesn’t follow the process?
3) Length of Vision
• Is your company continually putting 100% of its energy into meeting your quarterly targets?
• Is that the message pushed down from the leadership team?
• Is every investment decision based on how it will help you beat this quarter’s sales targets?
•vWhat is the expected payback period on ‘strategic initiatives?
• What are the metrics of success for your management, and what room is the team given for mid-term and long-term value initiatives?
I’ve often seen hard-won potentially very lucrative partnerships dropped as it wouldn’t deliver on sales targets in the current quarter. As one Head of Europe outlined to me once; “80% of my bonus is on meeting my quarterly targets. The other 20% doesn’t matter if I don’t meet my targets”.
4) Expectations from Partners
• Does your company expect your new partners to go all in, and 100% commit to selling your proposition, and not allow them to validate and build?
•Our partners asked to meet high revenue targets, while being offered minimal support, after all, “That’s their job. That’s why they’re getting 40%”?
• Does your company expect partner companies to operate to your culture and how you work?
• I know one reseller or system integrator who refuses to sign-up to revenue targets. They focus on providing the best solution for their customers. They don’t want an imposed bias to meet an imposed sales target.
5) Partnering is a Greenfield experiment
•Is partnering treated as an experiment? “as long as it doesn’t interfere with direct sales.”
• Is partnering given a greenfield secondary market, that your company has no previous experience with?
• Is one person asked to build a functional partnering program, while regularly having to ask favors from colleagues to get the proper support for partners?
• Is this one person not strong enough to ‘demand’ the support needed, while also being pressured to deliver results?
• Is partnering revenue in competition against direct sales reporting? Is partner sales and direct sales reporting to the same person or different?
Some points to help with the above:
• The points above impact your company’s general scalability, whether through partners or direct.
• As your business is still learning to build its partner program, you want to keep the unknowns limited. Partnering in a market you know, where you already have references customers, is easier?
• You know best how to sell your product. Why would you put partners at a disadvantage by not helping them?
• I’ve seen many companies struggle with partnering by getting in their way with variations of the points above.
The points are taken from Module 1: Partner Program Outline; Polices/Guiding decisions of the Tenego Academy’s Program;“Build your Partner Program like a Global Leader” .
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