If your company has some partners already and you are now growing your partner network, what will bring you success, and what are the risks?
The success of partner recruitment campaigns varies as much as direct sales campaigns, and there is no single approach that works for all companies.
If your solution company has a successful structured marketing and sales process, then this very likely demonstrates the strength of your customer proposition, your materials, and your process for sales success. These factors are also essential in securing and enabling partners.
If you have direct sales success and market traction with existing partners, then the signs are good for your building an effective partner program and network.
Use the following as your metrics to reduce risks and increase the pace of success:
1) Strength of Your Customer Proposition
How compelling is your customer proposition and your messaging to secure engagement with prospective customers and win their business?
Your messaging must get through the market noise of the competition and maybe legacy views of your solution space (what people think your solution does). You know you have a good message when your ideal target customers respond to your advertising and email campaigns.
The stronger your message then the easier it is for partners to secure customers, and to gain partner engagement. A strong message greatly reduces sales and marketing costs for your partners and dramatically improves your partner proposition.
2) Your Market Size – Number of Partners
If your chosen target partner types are in small numbers in the market, then will you secure enough partners with sufficient deal flow to meet your targets? Should you consider other partner types also? Are you being too specific or narrow in your selection criteria?
Not all potential partners will be interested, suitable, immediately ready or in a position to be proactive partners for your business. The higher the number of potential partner companies you engage, then the greater the number of options you will have in building a proactive partner network.
Not all partners will be equally proactive or equally successful, based on their capabilities and commitment. I strongly advise you not to depend on signing one partner and as a proof point. After all, in your direct sales business, you don’t validate your customer proposition with just one customer.
3) Strength of Your Partner Proposition
How compelling is your proposition to potential partners?
Your offer for a partner should be relevant to the partner’s business, and their key business drivers to meet their plans.
Even if you have an excellent offer for a partner, it is your messaging that gets them to listen. We all get offers every day with ‘fantastic opportunities’ that, at a quick glance, we decide are not relevant or not credible.
A compelling partner message typically takes time to develop over many iterations engaging the partners.
With success in your direct sales, you likely have proven customer-focused messaging developed that you can use in partner focussed messaging.
Additional challenges can arise in how the partners view the attractiveness, or not, in your solution space or maybe dominance of some competitors with partners.
4) Strength of Partner Fit
Are you targeting the right partner types with a sufficient partner proposition and do they have the capabilities to meet your business needs? If not, what are the partners’ weaknesses so you can make a plan to support them and align to win business together?
With a strong Partner Fit, your product fits neatly into the partner’s business, helping them generate relevant business for them, and you.
5) Your Partner Engagement Process
If you are in good shape on points 1 to 4 above, which are questioning your product and business readiness to partner effectively, then is your partner engagement process appropriate.
Depending on the partner type, your partner proposition, and the number of potential partners in the market, the partner identification, selection, contact, and evaluation can vary significantly.
For example, if you are seeking one partner per region, there may be a shortlist of candidates. This scenario would require a much different approach than if you are seeking a large number of referral partners from a very large number of prospects.
You want to be ready with relevant materials, clarity on what you want, be structured in your meetings and being prepared. You want to present a professional image of your business. You don’t want to frustrate potential partners with rambling meetings lacking structure, like stumbling in the dark. You don’t want to abuse their precious time.
You should also take into account that your potential partners may not have a process for evaluating you as a new solution partner. You can help partners by providing them with a mutual partner fit evaluation structure. Be careful not to ‘sell’ to partners or negotiate unrealistic sales targets.
It’s essential to be clear about what you want; Clear about the profiles of your target partner types, clear about what you are offering, and clear about what you expect from partners. The detail is important here as mistakes and omissions are expensive lessons to be learning late in an active campaign.
The root of many challenges in partner recruitment is that it may seem straightforward. There is much detail to be considered. Tenego Academy’s Partner Program Development Course will help you prevent these challenges for your business.