We were very pleased with the number of attendees and the level of engagement at our recent panel webinar Insider Insights on Creating a Compelling Partner Program with ESG Global and Impartner . There were some great questions asked and though we tried to answer as many of them as we could, there just wasn’t enough time in one hour!
Our first speaker, Kevin Rhone, discussed Best Practices for Software Channel Partner Effectiveness and presented some interesting findings from a recent industry study on Partner Enablement. Our second speaker, Olivier Choron discussed Partner Relationship Management and how the use of PRM software can provide a great return on investment. Following this, I presented a section discussing the importance of Partner Fit, covering partner capabilities, evaluation, recruitment and management. Below we have recapped on some of the questions addressed during the webinar.
Q: Does the attitude to in-person or online training reflect seniority (role or age), i.e. the social media generation? (Tony)
Yes, it does. There is a little code-wording in the Senior vs Junior. We asked for years of experience, we didn’t ask for age particularly, but we were able to segment and there was a difference between the more mature individuals in the study. (Kevin)
Q: Complexity in a sale is hard to standardise, sometimes it needs in-person discussion as well, any observations on this? (Donagh)
Yes, what we have found is that effective enablement starts with online basic skills around products, technologies and market places, and then the more advanced enablement training is about sales process, engagement with clients and raising the solution sale to reach a higher level of decision maker. That really mirrors the combination of online and in-person skills. (Kevin)
Q: How do you enable partners with tools to optimize efficiency? (Peter)
It’s important to have a clear understanding of where and when your audience want to consume your enablement assets. This could be presales or post-sales technical people in addition to the selling community. The best use of mobility access and tools was for those activities thatare used regularly on the fly and at point-of attack as opposed to more in-depth, where the learnersprefer to be able to sit and view on a laptop or desktop. (Oliver)
Q: Observations/tips on keeping partner skills up to date, but not having certification as a taxing exercise so much so that the partner disengages. (Sinead)
This is a tricky one because unfortunately, there is a huge benefit in having well-informed, well trained partners and that benefit is that they will be able to deliver great quality of service to the joint customer. So, the need for that training, both at the sales and technical level, is very important. And as a result of that, you do need to put some processes in place and some great training syllabus to cover all aspects the partner and customer journey together, and that can be heavy. It needs to be well managed. Now how can you make it less taxing? Maybe you can incentivize people. Maybe the training syllabus that is super technical and long can be shortened and maybe as an industry we don’t spend enough time on that. Clearly it can be put online. Maybe they could implement some gamification to entice people to complete it faster than others. (Olivier)
Q: How do you keep partners motivated to keep using the platform? Do they see it as additional processes they need to put in place? (Marta)
Well I think it is a critical part of it is making it integrated into their day to day activities. The point of sale assets need to be a stealth enablement tools. I think that the same thing can apply to the use of PRM as well, as long as the people in the field find it easy to navigate, find the information meaningful and important on their day to day activities.With this they are going to remain engaged and utilize that information and learn from it on a regular basis. (Kevin)
Q: What’s the best way to communicate with partners? (Mike)
From the study, it was a combination of methods. Simply using email becomes overwhelming and the recipient can’t determine which is important in which is not. A combination of amplifying that, with direct contact particularly for managed accounts, is really helpful. Alternatively, and it seems almost counter intuitive, but reducing the number of communications but indicating that they’re effective as a call-to-action for specific outcomes, improves a clickthrough rate and response rate as well. (Kevin)
I used to be the CEO at a company called Tremolo Software. One of our key products is called News-on-Demand, which is the product that Impartner acquired by acquiring Tremolo in June last year. And the reason I mentioned that is because News-on-Demand, the tool that we have at Impartner, which is embedded in the PRM system. It does something extremely unique. It enables 100% personalization of content for the user, by enabling the vendor to target the content to the user. But very important also, it enables the user to decide what content they want from the vendor. And this is a quite revolutionary product that we have sold now to a large number of companies that have the same problem you mentioned. It enables stopping what Kevin is referring to, which is this bombarding of communications to partners in a very one-size-fits-all approach, which to this day, 99% of IT vendors have done. So, I can tell you that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, Mike. And for those interested, there are solutions out there and I would really ask you to look at News-on-Demand from Impartner. There are solutions out there that enables the targeting of communications that makes it more relevant to the user and therefore deliver better results. (Olivier)
Q: With almost 200 partners, 20% active and many not accessing my portal, why and what should I do? (Mike)
This is a very common issue, because many of the partners that an organization is working with are also working with many other vendors. It would be ludicrous to expect all partners to be spending that much time in your portal when you have to consider they need to spend the same time with all the portals. Frankly, they’d never do any work. So, first of all, we need to set the right expectations. Who do you expect partners to go to your portal? You need to put the right approach on your portal, intuitive solutions that get people to what they need quickly in the best possible way and make it easy. There are ways, and we see many, many vendors out there who have built their own portal internally, built it 20 years ago, but nothing has changed. It’s not dynamic. It’s not personal. It’s not easy, and not even translated. It needs to be mobile friendly and intuitive. You need to continuously drive partners to your portal, hence the need to have personalised communication that drives people to it. (Olivier)
Q: We have multiple partners internationally, with an initial partner program and keen to develop. What are key components and business case points? (Susan)
I’m assuming this is a business case for internal justification of where they should spend. The justification for the use of the portal and the importance is driven by the activities that are going to drive contact. Those areas that are going to drive contact are those activities that are going to be used most often. They’re going to be used to drive a transaction velocity, are the sales m otions and are going to get the most usage and the most traffic. So, those are the kind of metrics that I think are going to justify investment in specific aspects of the portal. (Kevin)
Q: Are partners ever asked to pay to play to help cover the cost of the partner program? For example, hosting and maintaining software demo, providing case studies and supporting the program. (Annie)
I have experience of a very large IT/Telecom provider in the UK, charging the partner for the certification part of the program. It’s not something that the partners necessarily wanted, it was part of the refresh that I was involved with. But when there is value not just for the vendor but for the partner in the certification program, then you have to pay for that value. There are not many companies doing this, but it is possible. (Oliver)
So if you can demonstrate the value, you can charge. (Donagh)
Seeking a modest investment in certification from the partner acts as a qualifier for partner commitment, and if a partner is not willing to invest and to continue to invest, then that is an indication to you that they may not be committed to you as a partner. (Kevin)
Q: Curious to hear the perspective on best use of channel resources. Seems to be shifting away from direct more than ever… (Nate)
I’ve been working in Channel Marketing positions for nearly 30 years, I was hearing then, the same things I’m hearing today, which is that 75% of the world transactions are going through partners. So, do I think is changing? No, I think that proportion remains, but the whole spectrum of partners, new types of partners, that’s changing. The way to work with these partners is changing. (Olivier)
I absolutely agree with that statement. We’ve done a lot for work over the past couple of years on the subject of partner transformation around new and different business models. It started with the evolution to the cloud and now it’s going to multi-cloud, and a in a variety of solutions-oriented products and services that partners can sell. Our position is that the role of partners is even more important now because it’s more complex and more demanding. (Kevin)
Q: Any tips/insights you can share to organizations that have traditionally sold directly but are now growing a channel strategy? Examples on avoiding conflict. What our organization sells/trains/deploys Vs the partner. (Sinead)
My first thought on that is; culturally is the organization interested in partnering because I have seen many times, companies that say they want to build partnerships, but the senior management are very direct sales focused.(Donagh)
I think that culture is often one of the biggest problems no matter what the level. It’s critical for companies that are in the emerging state and want to move from a one on one relationship to a scalable relationship. We still see companies that would surprise you in terms of how large and broad they are, who are still struggling with that cultural part of how they want to go to market. (Kevin)
Q: Are you seeing new technologies like AI, Blockchain and machine learning impacting a channel program? and how? (Mike)
Yes, it’s impacting the channel in terms of their own services. Is it impacting Partner Management? Yes, it does. We see AI starting to come in and we see the need for a more personal approach, but we’re going beyond that. We need to go to a model where no one makes assumptions about what a user wants to see or what the user needs and that needs to be AI driven. That needs to be more personalized. AI is going to clearly impact the way partners are managed through a partner management system or other systems. (Olivier)
There were a lot of additional questions we didn’t have time to answer during the live webinar, these will be addressed in a follow up article. If you missed the live session and would like to view the recording of the webinar, you can enrol here: Insider Insights on Creating a Compelling Partner Program.