Our highly interactive February workshop raised a new set of challenges to select from. Challenges in ‘Partner Recruitment’ stood out and with much to discuss here, as there are so many different scenarios.

I’m trying to get around to everyone’s challenges, so hopefully, we’ll cover two or three new challenges monthly, with guests presenting their challenges.

Some Challenges selected from February:
•Challenge setting mutual partner expectations – Alysia
• Identifying viable partners – Cathy
• Identifying partners that are the right fit for the organisation – Colm
• Growing and ramping partner base as we expand our TAM – Charles
• Recruiting new partners – Kerrianne
• Time to value – internal vs external expectation setting – Jake
• Partner Metrics – Neil
• Identified our 1st potential partner in the US – Micheal
• Being in a Direct sales company, developing alliances – Mari Kate
• Partner Recruitment & engagement – Vanessa
• Enablement – Jakob
• Accountability – Kevin
• Balancing act: Automation, admin, and PM daily routine – Remco
• Recruitment – Tiz
• Finding the right partners – Neil
• Management Buy-in – Anonymous
• Engagement – Olivier

Topic Brief and Sample Content:

A two-minute flyover overview was presented of the Partner Recruitment Process & Team slide, from the Tenego Academy Partner Recruitment module from the “Build your Partner Program like a Global Leader” program.

Partner Recruitment Challenge: Guest Presentation

Our focus in this month’s session was on Partner Recruitment from a company starting on its Partnering journey. Thank you to Cathy for guesting in the session and representing the challenge shared by many companies.

With some questions to understand the solution, the market, and potential partner types, the questions then got into the heart of the challenge to help Cathy on her companies first steps in finding relevant partners.

Key issues raised:
• Selecting suitable partner types, as solution companies and not IT infrastructure providers – Partner Selection
• The offer for the partner – Partner Proposition

Partner Program Metrics Challenge:

Thanks, Neil, for raising this issue. We asked what metrics others were using in the partner programs; Partner Revenues was the most common response. Registered Deals and Partner Portal logins were featured also.

The discussion then turned to future success predicting metrics, and lead measures rather than the typical trailing indicators, such as revenues; Partner Campaigns being executed, Lead Registration, Partner Journey Metrics, and Partner Sales Pipeline metrics.

Some Feedback from Participants, and what worked well:

•”some solid and beneficial feedback.. will focus and save time in searching and selecting Partners.”
•”I think round table forums are very beneficial to converse and share ideas. Thank you!”
•”…I like the casual discussion format, yet structured and constructive.”

And some suggestions for improving the sessions:

“I think it would be interesting as part of the follow-up questionnaire to ask participants their key take-away(s) and post them somewhere. Keep the learning building.” – – DK response: “Good idea. We need to think about this one.”