The head of an alliance trade group, a well-regarded industry consultant and the founder of a global channel agency join Impartner’s roster of industry luminaries.

As we head into 2022, Impartner is excited to announce the addition of three new members to its Channel Chief Advisory Board (CCAB), which is comprised of renowned industry authorities and SMEs well-versed in partnering trends, go-to-market best practices and forward-looking research.  The new CCAB members include the head of a trade group devoted to partnerships and alliances, a well-regarded industry consultant and the founder of a global channel agency. The new CCAB members are:

• Michael Leonetti, president, the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP)
• Meredith Caram, Chief Revenue Officer, The JS Group
• Tom Perry, founder and CEO, Sherpa Marketing UK

Here’s a little more on each and why they are key channel thought leaders:

Meredith Caram, Chief Revenue Officer, The JS Group

Caram is a business expansion leader with experience leading diverse sales and marketing teams. She joined the JS Group, which provides guidance on strategy and execution to industry organizations that do business with partners, in February 2021. As chief revenue officer at the JS Group, Caram helps attract new business and expand the organization’s engagement with existing customers. A longtime veteran of AT&T, Caram brings both visionary sales experience and partnering best practices to each customer engagement. She’s especially keen on helping industry professionals find their inner “positive disruptor” that can help them dramatically improve success with partners.

Michael Leonetti, president, the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP)

A longtime pharmaceutical industry executive, Leonetti today oversees the ASAP, whose mission is to help organizations bring discipline and best practices to alliance building and partnerships. Leonetti joined the ASAP after a long career with Boehringer Ingelheim. Today, Leonetti devotes his time helping organizations and individuals alike better understand the value and demands of professional partnership management worldwide. In particular, his association offers practitioners professional development, trend analysis and peer-to-peer networking. He’s particularly motivated to help organizations adapt partnering best practices throughout their organizations, especially after leaning on partners during global pandemic.

Tom Perry, founder and CEO, Sherpa Marketing UK

Perry oversees an award-winning, high-growth channel agency that supports global companies in channel their transformation. Among other things, his company helps companies develop competitively structured and aligned strategies, management programs and measurement guidelines. Specifically, Sherpa UK provides services that help companies plan, recruit, engage, enable, grow and measure successful partnerships. In addition, Sherpa UK also offers managed PRM services to vendor organizations based on leading industry platforms including Impartner PRM. Sherpa UK has helped the likes of Lenovo, Sage, Verizon and others implement partner programs that have delivered sustained growth and improved partner satisfaction. As for Perry, he has worked in technology and channels for the bulk of his career, and is particularly knowledgeable in partner best practices, channel economics and AI technology.

New Era, New Thinking

Impartner is excited to work with these industry thought leaders, who will participate in a variety of activities with the company including podcasts, video interviews and related editorial blogs, columns and eBooks.

“As we navigate the fast-changing world of partner automation to develop new innovations for the emerging go-to-market tech stack, it’s invaluable to be able to consult and tap into the best thinking the industry has to offer,” says Kerry Desberg, Impartner CMO. “We look forward to sharing new content with input from these three industry leaders this year, in 2022 and beyond.”

Covid, enhanced teck stacks and new business models are driving new thinking around partner success

By T.C. Doyle

Partnercentricity is back in a big way. This time around, it’s not a platitude but a corporate priority for many instead.

If you are not familiar with the concept, “partnercentricity” is a business theory that took hold among tech vendors several years ago. It’s the idea that everything a company does must have a partner-centric component baked in from the start. While a popular buzzword, the idea caught on among some tech leaders and upstarts who leaned heavily on partners, but not all. Several trends have brought partnercentricity back to the fore. Reasons include the spread of Covid-19, the advance of new tech stacks and the maturity of new business models. Here’s why.

Covid, of course, disrupted the go-to-market strategies of organizations the world over. Seemingly overnight, selling through a broad and diverse network of business partners never seemed more important. Similarly, the rise of new tech stacks such as partner relationship management (PRM) and through channel marketing automation (TCMA) software have provided vendor organizations with tools and confidence they need to more effectively sell through partners. Then there is the maturity of once fledgling business models. Today, thousands upon thousands of new companies have found ways to make money by affiliating with vendors in any number of ways, not just product reselling.

As a result of these and other trends, “partnercentricity” is back on the minds of business leaders. To work this time around, the concept must be woven into the fabric of a company, not affixed to the side as an afterthought, says Kristine Stewart, vice president of client success and marketing at Channel Impact, a San Francisco Bay Area-based channel firm that advises companies on their go-to-market partner strategies and services. Stewart helps organizations extend efforts to elevate customer success and experiences to business partners that engage customers daily. By doing so, Stewart helps vendors and partners alike deliver superior outcomes to customers of all sizes regardless of their market, geography, maturity, etc.

A member of the Impartner Channel Chief Advisory Board (CCAB), Stewart has studied partnercentricity in depth as part of her work on partner success and transformation. Her assessment? Improving partner success and experiences hinges on a number of key factors that organizations with high-levels of partnercentricity get right. They include alignment, decision-making, business economics, product development, support and more. (For a complete list of factors, be sure to download Stewart’s thoughts on partner success and partner transformation.)

Here’s a look at three things that successful vendors must get right in order to be a truly partner-centric company.

Alignment

Here’s a quick test of partnercentricity: how close is your organization’s top channel manager to your company’s chief executive? By that I mean does he or she have a direct line of site to the C-suite? If not, that’s a potential problem. This is because channel success depends on corporate alignment — the kind that is best achieved when an organization’s channel chief has a seat at the executive table.

In many organizations that have a longstanding commitment to doing business with partners, this is a non-issue. Think Cisco in technology, GM in auto manufacturing or AmerisourceBergen in pharmaceuticals. Little wonder that these companies have organizational alignment when it comes to go-to-market business models, partner investment and product development. In such companies, everything from how products and services are developed to partner enablement to compensation is aligned to promote partner success. Channels thrive as a result.

In other instances, however, infighting, siloed-thinking and morale problems are commonplace.

From the C-suite to the warehouse to the call center and beyond, partner success depends on organizational alignment. If partner success and experiences are not among an organization’s top 10 priorities, then channels are an afterthought and will struggle to achieve success.

Economics

When asked one time if he was concerned about his partners’ inability to make money from their engagement with his company, the CEO of one of technology’s largest companies shrugged. “We have different business models,” he sniffed.

Translation: that’s their problem.

For the better of a decade thereafter, this company struggled with partner satisfaction. That is until a new management team recommitted to partnering. Among its top priorities? Leave more on the table for partners.

Which brings me to your company: do you fully understand how your partners make money with your company? And how much? Also, do you know if partners earn more with your rivals than they do with you? If not, you should.

Getting the economics of partnering right is a by-product of proper alignment (see above). But there’s more. Partner economics requires a deep commitment to strategic thinking and financial management. It also requires sophisticated analysis of business models, macro-economics and intangibles. Take ecosystem monetization.

Companies including Salesforce measure how much additional revenue partners generate for doing business with them. At many companies, the additional revenue is anywhere between $4-to-$7 for every $1 of vendor revenue partners generate. That extra amount translates into cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, consulting, training, support and more. It’s enough to thrive on, in other words.

Does your company’s products and services create such an opportunity? If not, then the amount of direct remuneration you provide must be significant to keep partners engaged.

Commitment

This last bucket includes a number of things that Stewart studies in depth in her work. Commitment translates into a number of items both large and small. Take enablement.

At companies with a mix of go-to-market strategies, competitive information shared with direct or inside sales is often not shared with partners. It’s because corporate executives fear that “secret ingredients” may ultimately fall into the wrong hands if shared with less than scrupulous partners.

On the surface the concept seems reasonable. But in practice, it puts every partner you work with at a disadvantage when it comes to your competition. Worse, it pits your partners against your own sales team.

A better way? Demonstrate your commitment by graciously sharing your best thinking, data and tools with partners. Yes, your secret sauce could fall into the hands of your competition. But by the time it does, you’ll have moved well beyond your rivals’ ability to use internal information against you.

Now consider tool sharing. Today, world class partnering requires world-class automation. So why not provide that to your partners? Put it this way: If you give your direct salespeople the best tools in the world, doesn’t it make sense to do the same for your partners? (We at Impartner certainly believe so and can show you why 78% of your peers believe PRM provides them a competitive advantage.)

Commitment comes in other forms. It includes a pledge to keep confidential information shared between you and a partner, a promise to share the customer support burdens and the spoils of a good year or quarter. It depends on thoroughly understanding partnercentricity through and through.

Can you hack that?

Managing partners and channel sales is a wonderful job, but there are some misunderstandings about the role

By T.C. Doyle

If you’re new to channel sales or management, or even a seasoned veteran of partnering, you likely have many questions on key aspects of your job. You may even wonder how other channel chiefs at companies like yours operate.

No sense operating in the dark or assuming anything. Here are seven myths or falsehoods that we can dispel to help you better understand the challenges you face. In this video, which is part of Impartner’s “Lessons from the Edge” insights series, Impartner Channel Chief Advisory Board (CCAB) member Theresa Caragol unpacks commonly held misperceptions. And she would know.

Caragol is a former channel chief herself (Ciena, Extreme Networks) and, as head of the vendor advisory Achieve Unite, helps educate current channel chiefs in the tech industry on best practices, go-to-market strategies and partner education. Caragol founded Achieve Unite five years ago and has helped channel practitioners, tech vendors and other companies both large and small.

In this video, Caragol explains how to interact with executive management, what to expect in terms of turf battles and how best to set expectations. She also shares some inside secrets that even seasoned channel veterans do not know.

“Revenue is not a leading indicator,” Caragol says. Instead, channel chiefs would be well advised to invest in partner automation so they can track other key performance indicators (KPIs) that are more forward-looking, including partner logins, deal registrations and training engagement.

For more on ways partner automation can help you better understand metrics inside your channels, be sure to check out an Impartner demo today.

T.C. Doyle is the Channel Growth Evangelist at Impartner, the leader in channel management and Partner Relationship Management (PRM) technology. A journalist, book author and analyst, Doyle has worked in media for three decades. As channel evangelist, Doyle produces podcasts, case studies, e-books and more for Impartner. Doyle can be reached at [email protected].

By T.C. Doyle

Let’s be honest: some of your business partners just don’t get it. They don’t understand or fully embrace your business proposition, strategic vision or go-to-market strategy.

Some days you wonder whether they have their own agenda, right?

Well here’s a newsflash: they do. And it isn’t to sell your software or recite your sales messages as though they were performing on stage.

If you expect channel partners and business allies see the world through your lens given how much time, money and energy you invest in them, then here’s another news bulletin: your expectations are unrealistic. Chances your priorities are, too.

So says Glenn Robertson, CEO of Purechannels, a global marketing and sales advisory based in the UK that helps vendors, distributors and channel partners upgrade their go-to-market programs and activities.

Robertson was among several channel experts who shared strategic insights in Channel Growth Hacking, a new, bi-monthly discussion hosted by Impartner and the JS Group. Channel Growth Hacking takes place on the second and fourth Thursday every month on Clubhouse, the drop-in social media platform.

In the inaugural Channel Growth Hacking event, Robertson challenged conventional thinking that says partners will respond positively to your message and agenda if you simply offer the right incentive. That’s nonsense, he says. In the Clubhouse session moderated by Kerry Desberg, CMO at Impartner, and Michelle Ragusa-McBain, vice president of global channel strategy with the JS Group, Robertson challenged channel practitioners to upgrade their thinking.

“If you can assume anything about your partners it’s that the majority are either unhappy with you or unmoved by pleas to sell more of your stuff,” said Robertson.

If you want to better resonate with partners, “switch your pitch” to them, he says. Instead of pushing innovation, offer business value.

“So many vendors pitch partners to sell their solutions. But the messaging and programs they lead with is all about them,” said Robertson. “Partners don’t wake up every day thinking or even caring about your marketing or lead generation program. They get up every day and ask themselves ‘who gives me best experience so I can go out and do what’s best for my customers?’”

Like other channel experts and members of the Impartner Channel Chief Advisory Board (CCAB), Robertson works closely with vendors and partners every day. Time and again he is dismayed by myopic thinking. Doing business through partners successfully requires a level of selflessness if not empathy that is lacking in the tech industry. Take partner programs.

Many vendor programs fall short due to the following:

• Unrealistic sales expectations
• Overly rigid program requirements
• Feeble automation and tools
• Poorly thought-out economics

Here’s a closer look at each, and a suggested growth hack worth considering.

Unrealistic sales expectations

Vendors with hot-selling innovations often assume partners will line up to sell their technology. They also believe that partners will agree to minimum requirements from the very start. Vendors may even believe that partners will agree to sign long-term commitments and invest in training and certification without ever closing a single piece of business. If your program has minimums, comes with one-sided contracts or includes expectations that channel partners pull their people out of the field to train on your technologies, then prepare to explain to your chief revenue officer why you failed to hit your revenue goals.

Channel Growth Hack: Every partner that joins your program did so for a reason. Chances are it was to help customers solve a business problem, not to grow their business. If you understand this first and foremost, you will understand that getting to that first sales is wholly dependent on solving those customer problems. Instead of goal setting, optimize problem solving.

Overly Rigid Program Requirements

One sales engineer, two salespeople and an organizational certification that must be updated every six months. Oh, and an agreement to perform a certain number of marketing initiatives every year, plus a promise to participate in quarterly business reviews and a pledge to hand over customer lists. If this sounds like just some of the things you expect from partners, then don’t expect to make many friends in the channel. Ditto if you lavish your best rewards on a small set of Gold or Diamond partners. For a program to work properly, it must be fair and equitable. Your program must recognize that partners have high-turnover, long sales cycles and different business needs. Inflexibility is inexcusable.

Channel Growth Hack: Offer a solution when a partner loses a top certified engineer, not a penalty. Let’s face it, tech jobs are hard to fill because top tech talent is in high demand. As a result, certified tech professionals move around a lot. That can wreak havoc on an organization that must maintain a certified professional on staff at all times. Rather than cut a partner loose when a certified professional leaves, why not offer a solution to the problem such as a program to backfill certified engineers on a temporary basis?

Feeble Automation Tools

The idea that you can run an ecosystem on a spreadsheet is woefully outdated. It’s like trying to pay a month’s worth of bills with hand-written checks. World-class partner programs run on world class tools — the kind that provide consumer-like experiences when it comes to onboarding, training and certification, enablement and through-channel marketing. With world-class tools, vendors also have access to data so they can properly plan, manage and reward partners. If partners struggle with any aspect of your program, you will earn a reputation for being difficult to work with. That’s a kiss of death in the channel no matter how innovative your solutions are.

Channel Growth Hack: You didn’t hear this from us but it pays to understand where you stand in terms of best-in-class in your market category. Before you launch your next program, take the time to research who prospective partners think is best-in-class when it comes to partner automation technology. Then find out which of your competitors are using partner automation software. If you think you can compete without proper tools, you’ll be sorry later.

Poorly though-out out economics

Chances are you have calculated the ROI you get on every deal you close. But have you done the same for your partners? Moreover, have you asked yourself whether the amount of money you earn from the efforts partners on your behalf is commensurate or at least fair with the return they enjoy? These are serious questions that beg for honest answers. Even top tech companies struggle in this area. There were times that Microsoft and Cisco did, for example. Other vendors are today. Whenever financial returns are imbalanced, partner satisfaction falls precipitously.

Channel Growth Hack: Before launching any initiative, program or promotion with partners, ask yourself where the money is in it for them. If you cannot see it, they surely will not find it. Partners are too busy to follow breadcrumbs and too wise to believe in promises. Show them the money.

In business, that’s akin to showing them you care.

You can start by putting empathy into your expectations, your policies and guidelines, your tools and technology, and your economic plans, too. As Ragusa-McBain says, “your partner program is a reflection of how you see the world. Show partners your best.”

For more Channel Growth Hacks, be sure to tune into Clubhouse every second and fourth Thursday of the Month. Each week, you’ll hear from channel experts like Robertson, including:

• Latane Conant, CMO, 6Sense
• Andrew McCraith, vice president of business development, Conversica
• Scott Boyd, global director of Partner Experience and Platforms, Dell Boomi
• Cassandra Gholston, CEO, PartnerTap
• Gina Batali Brooks, president, Is Inspired

One hour for a years’ worth of wisdom from leading business experts? That’s a fair exchange any day.

Now do yourself a favor and see what world-class automation tools can do for your business. Sign up for an Impartner demo and gauge how well your partner experiences compare to your competition.

T.C. Doyle is the Channel Growth Evangelist at Impartner, the leader in channel management and Partner Relationship Management (PRM) technology. A journalist, book author and analyst, Doyle has worked in media for three decades. As channel evangelist, Doyle produces podcasts, case studies, e-books and more for Impartner. Doyle can be reached at [email protected].

New in town? Welcome to your new role in channels.

No doubt you want to make a great first impression. But what if we told you there were steps you can take to achieve more? Better still, what if we said you can begin taking these steps today? You can with this three-step primer.

Follow the steps below and you will absolutely win your first 30 days on the job.

Before you begin, keep in mind that everything that follows is designed to help you and your organization develop something called a Vision, Strategy and Execution (VSE) framework for channels.

If you’re not familiar, a VSE is essentially a plan for helping professionals like you identify where you want to go, how you can get there, and what specific steps you can take along the way.

If you were planning a vacation, you might think of your Vision as your destination, your Strategy as your budget and travel plans, and your Execution steps as your dates of travel, transportation details and daily agenda.

Your vacation VSE, in other words, could be the following:

• Vision: One week in Rome
• Strategy: Book flights on Delta for $750 each, stay at the Hotel Hassler Roma for $650 per night
• Execution steps: Depart New York-JFK on the 5th, arrive Rome-FCO on the 6th; take Tiber Limousine to Hotel Hassler Rome where early check-in is available; venture out to tour the Coliseum and the Pantheon

Before jetting off to Rome or anywhere else, let’s get you started on your new channels job. (For a complete roadmap, don’t miss our “Definitive Guide for New Channel Chiefs.” It’s designed to help you define a VSE for understanding, planning, and executing steps that will increase your probability of achieving success in your first 180 days.)

To help you defy expectations in your first 30, we recommend the following:

Step One: Familiarize yourself with the surroundings

While the preceding might sound obvious, you’d be surprised how many executives fail to prioritize this important step. Eager to get started quickly, headstrong leaders do not take the time to thoroughly understand their company’s products or services, it’s go-to-market strategies and competitive challenges. A good place for you to start is with your own executive management team. Get on the calendar of your leaders quickly. This includes everyone who has influence if not responsibility over sales, finances, product delivery, marketing and customer service. In between meetings with your organization’s leaders, pore over your company’s website. Study your company’s language and learn its taxonomy. Also take note of how often it communicates with the outside world and how.

If you don’t take these steps within your first two weeks, you could have trouble later getting buy-in for any programmatic changes that may be required. What is more, taking the time to familiarize yourself with your company’s history, deliverables and culture will go a long way to helping you understand the types of partners it engages, the programs it offers and the receptivity they enjoy in the market.

Bonus tip: Take note of little things. Do employees lock their doors or office desks? If so, that could be a sign that your company has trust issues. Do people leave food containers in conference rooms? That could be a sign of arrogance. Even little things convey insights. Monitors with Post-it Notes filled with passwords can indicate a lackadaisical attitude about security. Unused videoconferencing equipment collecting dust in a corner could suggest a lack of follow-though on initiatives.

Step Two: Gauge the strength of your team and its expectations

After you fill out HR forms and introduce yourself to your new team, you’re going to want to get a sense of its strengths and weaknesses. A review of past performance appraisals will offer some insights, but you’re likely to get a better understanding of team member capabilities by reviewing their recent performance. Find out what their individual goals are, and how they are compensated.

Also, ask them about their levels of satisfaction, stress and motivation. Make sure to ask if any team member applied for your job and whether any team member is currently looking for another position elsewhere. If you get the sense that there is widespread job dissatisfaction among your new team, recognize that team members may not see you as an agent of change but a supporter of the status quo, instead. In such cases, it’s best to set realistic expectations and not over-promise.

Another management must: determine the level of truthfulness and candor of your team. From the start, you’re going to want to know what’s working and what isn’t. If your team has been conditioned by punishment to avoid the truth, then overcoming your challenges will be doubly difficult. You must foster a safe environment where the good, the bad and ugly are treated with equal respect.

Bonus tip: With Covid-related lockdowns coming to an end, workplace norms are once again likely to change. Set workplace guidelines quickly but take into account that some personnel disruptions are likely to outlive the pandemic by quite some time.

Step Three: Learn the tools you have and what your industry’s best relies on
If you believe that this three-step plan is another take on people, process and technology assessment, then congratulations; it is — albeit localized to channels and channels management. So let’s turn to technology and automation used to help manage, enable and reward partners.

Not long ago, partner management was more art than science. But those days are gone, say leading market experts including Jay McBain, a technology industry analyst who studies channels at Forrester Research. Among other things, McBain tracks investments world-class organizations make in partner automation platforms. His assessment: “Ecosystems don’t run on spreadsheets.”

Instead, they run on world-class partner platforms that automate everything from onboarding to training and certification to through channel marketing. More than three-quarters of those who have invested in world-class partner automation platforms say their organizations enjoy a competitive advantage as a result. And nearly a third say that have enjoyed revenue growth since adopting a partner relationship management (PRM) platform.

Which brings us to your company: In your first 30 days, immerse yourself into the tools your team uses. This includes the portal your company expects partners to use. Take a tour for yourself and pay close attention to the signup, onboarding, accreditation and marketing experience. Nothing you do to familiarize yourself with your organization will help you understand your partners’ journeys better than using the very tools you provide to them.

Bonus tip: In a lobby display case or executive suite somewhere is a piece of crystal glass or wood plaque that your company gave to its “Partner of the Year.” Make an appointment with that company and ask its top executive if you are their best partner. If not, ask why. Pay particular attention to what they say about automation and ease of doing business.

Follow these three steps and we believe you will be closer to developing your channels VSE. When you’re done, don’t forget to check out our complete 180-day guide.
We don’t promise that this three-step plan will lead to a suite at the Hotel Hassler Rome. But if it does, we promise to send you a bottle of bubbly on us.

In the meantime, good luck in your first 30 days. Be sure to check out the free insights and thought leadership on channels and automation that Impartner provides. You’ll be glad you did.

T.C. Doyle is the Channel Growth Evangelist at Impartner, the leader in channel management and Partner Relationship Management (PRM) technology. A journalist, book author and analyst, Doyle has worked in media for three decades. As channel evangelist, Doyle produces podcasts, case studies, e-books and more for Impartner. Doyle can be reached at [email protected].

The author of this piece is Peter O’Neill, Research Director at Research in Action which is an internationally recognized powerhouse for their core strength in Marketing and IT Automation.. He is also a member of the Impartner Channel Chief Advisory Board (CCAB). The CCAB is a group comprised of top channel thought leaders, analysts and consultants who each have decades of channel experience and insights to contribute to channel best practice discussions.

In my activities as an industry analyst, I talk to many B2B companies about partner automation systems and the discussions are always focused on how to recruit, categorize and generally manage their partners.

Basically, the focus is on partner relationship management. This is because most organizations continue to think of various channel partners – be they agents, distributors, influencers, resellers or eCommerce aggregators – as serving a pure distribution function for their organization. While they do often share product marketing content with these partners, it’s merely because they want to ensure that their own brand is well represented, as well as trying to govern how products are presented to customers.

But that’s only half of the partner automation story…

More-savvy B2B marketing professionals are waking up to the fact that channel partners can be leveraged for local marketing reach as well. They’re learning to open up marketing automation systems that can be accessed by channel partners. This concept of through-channel marketing automation (TCMA), sometimes called local or distributed marketing, is the practice of engaging channel partners to extend and amplify a firm’s marketing campaigns and activities. And for those willing to invest, it can be incredibly powerful.

But why set up a TCMA program? Here are two key considerations:

• Risk management – Most channel partners now invest in digital marketing programs, but don’t always have the resources and skills to be effective at it. As a result, organizations run the risk of ‘bad marketing at scale’ when channel partners (left to their own devices) launch programs into the market without the firm’s brand, or dilute, confuse or even damage the brand image.
• MDF investment management – The rise in channel partner marketing has made MDF applications more diverse and difficult to manage. The best way for an organization to control MDF spend is to align it to their own distributed marketing program.

TCMA is slowly being adopted across the technology industry where marketing automation investments have started to become the norm (I’m seeing it first-hand). But I also notice interest in other B2B industry sectors as well. All companies want to onboard new partners more quickly. They also want to scale partner marketing efforts and build partner loyalty, leverage partner’s promotional efforts to amplify their own marketing efforts and maintain corporate brand integrity. TCMA gives them new levels of visibility into channel marketing performance.What functions does a modern TCMA system support?

Syndicated content with agile control over messaging – Content syndication in TCMA is the ability to create a content feed for the channel partner’s website keeping authorized content in synch, effortlessly, with the manufacturer. In fast changing industries (like technology) or regulated industries (like financial services or health care) the ability to implement change quickly, but with complete control, is a key imperative.

• Syndicated campaigns to increase customer outreach – TCMA platforms enable syndication of co-branded marketing campaigns. From simple, single-step campaigns to multi-stage, omnichannel campaigns, organizations can set a template while still allowing partners to customize some limited elements of the campaign artifacts.

• Enablement of your most reclusive partners – Many organizations have treasured partners for their sales capacity, local presence or technical competency, but not for their marketing prowess. TCMA platforms let you deal with that reality by offering subscription marketing that allows your less sophisticated partners to ‘set it and forget it.’

• Local-presence marketing to ensures “preferred solution” partners are found – Some TCMA vendors offer directory listing services with standardized business citations that include the name, address, phone number and URL for local partners to be deployed across hundreds of sites like Google+, Yelp and Bing. For organizations with strong brand identity and market pull, these are important features to maximize the revenue results of the investment in brand.

• Paid search marketing connects channel partners to active local buyers – Some TCMA vendors also include managed execution of the campaign. This ensures that partner campaigns do not conflict with the vendor’ search engine marketing (SEM) programs, and that local partners do not compete against one another in the bidding for keywords.

• DAM functions for robust content marketing efforts – Most TCMA solutions support a digital asset library that delivers storage and secure retrieval of all sorts of digital content. The assets are typically configured with metadata to enable categorical, keyword or “quick” search options that make it easy for users to find and access materials.

• Physical asset management supporting print marketing – ‘Print’ is far from dead in local marketing, so TCMA vendors support ordering processes for printed/co-branded collateral, brochures, flyers, posters and direct mail pieces (even high-resolution files that are downloadable for the partner to print on their own).

If the benefits are so clear, why is there not more investment in TCMA?

My observation is that the main hurdle to realizing these benefits is based on organizational challenges. The word ‘channel’ is unfortunately used in marketing departments to mean communication channels and so the business partner channel is often neglected or overlooked by marketing. It’s often the case that many CMOs don’t even think of business partners in the context of a marketing channel. And many organizations still manage their business partners from within the sales organization, so marketing doesn’t feel responsible or empowered.

Once you’re ready to start your TCMA journey, how can you help ensure that the initiative will be successful? Here are some quick tips based on the projects I have seen:

• Understand your customers’ journeys – Research and analyze the role that channel partners play when buyers are researching and ultimately deciding. Use this to define your through-channel marketing mix strategy.

• Score channel partners by their marketing prowess – You will need to offer a range of marketing collaboration capabilities, from DIY (do it yourself) to DIFM (do it for me) to the channel partners, depending on their capabilities.

• Work on an adoption strategy – Do not assume that all partner marketers become enchanted with the TCMA tool you have chosen. They may even have other alternatives to work with from other vendors. You need to include assistance resources and incentives in the project. You also should plan to introduce the extensive features included within most TCMA solutions in a phased manner to avoid overpowering the partners.

Peter O’Neill is a research director at Research in Action, a leading independent technology research and consulting company. He is also a member of the Impartner Channel Chief Advisor Board. Read more about Peter here or contact him at [email protected] or [email protected]

1. It All Starts and Ends with Partner Experience
   It all starts and ends with partner experience and making sure that you’re really delivering what partners need to be successful. To be able to build and deliver the partner experience that your partners need, you have to know who they are. You need to understand their business, what types of customers they sell to and how they deliver their services. Your partners are solution providers for their customers, and your product is just one of many that fit into that solution. You need to understand how they’re delivering those solutions, what their skill sets are, are they doing their own custom development, and are they selling into specific vertical markets? To deliver the best partner experience, always start with the customer environment and move upward through the partner solution into your technology or product that you’re delivering and understand where your product fits into that partner’s overall business.
2. Make the Promise and then be able to Deliver
   As you build your partner program, you’re going off of your own experiences, seeing what’s going on in the industry and looking at what you think is the best approach to a program framework. Regardless of how you’ve structured your program, you need to be able to execute and manage the program elements. In addition to following best practices from industry analysts and reports, take into consideration what your own culture is within your organization and what you’re able to execute and manage successfully. You have to be able to make realistic promises to your partners and then be able to deliver them. If you over-promise and under-deliver, you’re constantly trying to catch up. If you structure your program to make it manageable from the beginning, and then you increase and improve, you’ll build a better base and provide a better partner experience as you grow.
3. Show Partners Where You Fit in the Solution
   Lots of partners is a great goal to have; you always have a baseline and a goal, but you have to look at what you can realistically manage. Getting tons of partners to sign up is not a success factor when looking at your success metrics. If you can’t manage a thousand partners, you’re unable to deliver that quality or deliver the program and experience that you’ve promised. You need to really define what you can manage based on your infrastructure and what resources you have to support your partners. You want partners that you work with to be engaged and your teams to be engaged with those partners, really hold them through the process to deliver that partner experience and get the rewards. Work side-by-side and teach them how to fish by bringing them in to learn about your company. They’re learning how you work, as well as the product that you’re selling. Show partners how to implement, how to deliver the support and how to go out and start fishing to bring in new opportunities.
4. Execute Based on Understanding what your Partners Could do Without you
   Partners are the trusted advisors; their skills, their relationships with the customers and the services that they’re delivering to those customers help build the strong relationships within your program. The partners that you work with have multiple touchpoints across multiple technologies, vendors and solutions. They are the managed services that are not only delivering the technology, but they’re also keeping it running and they’re there to support when the product doesn’t work or when the business needs them to support the solution. Don’t place stringent requirements and rigid structure around a partner program, remember that you’re courting them probably much more earnestly than they would be when courting you. It’s important to keep in mind where you fit in the scheme of things and how important your product or technology is to their overall business. Know your partners, structure your partner program in a realistic way and just like any relationship in life, put your partners’ needs first.
5. Establish, Develop and Deliver a Partner Satisfaction Program
   Whether you’re just starting out or have an established partner program, without understanding how partners feel about you and the services that you’re delivering, how do you know where you need to focus and improve? Oftentimes, companies push out what they want to say, what they want the partners to do and the experience they want partners to have. Whether that is pushing their messages, content, events or sales training, they spend a lot of funding on their needs. But is it delivered in a way that is beneficial to your partners? Start by having a baseline of what is important to the partner, what’s important to their business and figure out what do they need from you? Then find out how you’re performing against those needs that are most important and measure it over time. Thinking of your partners’ satisfaction, listening to partners and asking them to help structure and improve the program that you’ve designed for them will help you get a higher level of loyalty, and they will be more involved with you as a business partner.

Now more than ever, it is important to keep up with trends and continue to adjust, adapt and connect. So much of the conversation in the marketplace today is about what’s changing because of the pandemic, however, the foundations that really make a channel organization run well are things that don’t change, shouldn’t change and won’t change. Listen to the full podcast with Patricia Rush, President of Rush To Channel and Impartner Channel Chief Advisory Board member. Tune in to the Build a Better Channel series and don’t miss an episode!