” Research on referral program success rates shows that broad promotion of a company’s referral program is a significant step in getting customers to refer multiple times. “

Organizations looking to develop a referral program have a lot to consider. Everything from finding the appropriate technology to determining the best date for launch to figuring out their reward structure, it all takes deliberate thought to make sure the right decisions are made. Of all the moving parts to consider, following these top five must-dos will ensure your program is a success:

1)  Devote the time, money and resources needed to set the program up right the first time

Companies often think launching their referral programs as pilot studies and then growing them into more robust programs later is the way to go. Typically this is because they either don’t have the IT resources available to create important integrations, or they don’t have complete buy-in from corporate. This is a mistake because referral programs need to be designed and implemented from the get-go to be full-fledged functional and efficient tools for the audiences they serve. Approaching a referral program with “one toe in the water” will net potentially inconclusive and often mediocre results. If the referral program is going to be an integral part of the enterprise, then find a way to incorporate all the parts of the enterprise necessary to ensure program adoption and success right from the start.

2) Understand IN PRACTICE how leads are currently making it into the sales funnel

When a potential customer came in with an existing referral program that needed improving, their executives explained how the sales process worked: sales reps were currently using a home-grown referral database to enter leads and then managing those leads using their CRM. 

The home-grown referral database was unsophisticated and the data proved hard to track referral marketing success. They needed a more streamlined approach whereby the sales reps could simply enter leads into the referral program and have them sync to the CRM, updating automatically as the sale progressed. It turned out, reps had never utilized the home-grown referral database at all; instead, they were entering the leads directly into the CRM.

After developing a new process to “streamline” things, they had inadvertently introduced a whole new step in the sales process. This is not an uncommon discovery for companies when they start to dig into the details of how their sales processes work.

Before considering a referral program, companies need to truly understand how their sales team interacts with the tools they are provided when it comes to current customers and potential leads. There are ways to successfully integrate referral programs into CRM systems that can streamline the work being done and increase ROI without introducing a change in the organizational culture or sales process.

3) Make the call-to-action for customers crystal clear

Drop-offs in referral program participation often occur in two spots: the registration point for customers and the call-to-action point for leads. This happens because customers may be drawn to what the referral program is offering, but if the message is vague or cumbersome at the point of decision to join, they are less likely to complete their registration. Similarly, leads may click through the emails or social posts from their friends, but if they can’t tell what they get for providing their personal information, the drop-off rate will increase.

A company with a successful referral program used the following headline in their recruitment emails to customers: “Get a $20 card and 1000 reward points when you get your friends to buy our product.” In the body of the email, there were three steps to achieving the reward. 

The message is simple: 1) Tell your customers what you want them to do. 2) Tell them how to do it. 3) Tell them what they will get for doing it.

4) Promote the referral program everywhere customers go and promote it constantly

Research about referral program success rates shows a broad promotion of a company’s referral program is a significant step in getting customers to refer multiple times. On average, twenty percent of customers will register for the referral program, then a significant proportion of those who register for the program will only make one successful referral during the lifetime of the program. Customers who have a positive experience with the referral program are twice as likely to successfully refer again, and one-fifth of any company’s customers who register for their referral program will refer successfully multiple times. 

One of the key values reoccurring referral customers bring to a company’s sales process is their knowledge of others who are in the market for a particular product. However, timing is critical. If a current customer gets a referral program invitation email from a company but has no referral in mind, the email will be ignored. However, weeks later, the same customer may identify a referral and will need to be able to easily find a link to the company’s referral program, preferably on the website or through the online account pages.

The average number of days between successful referrals for customers who refer more than once is sixty-three. Companies must advertise their referral program everywhere their customers go and promote it constantly through as many channels as possible in order to gain results. Without frequent and continued promotion, referral program success is left completely to chance.

5) Follow FTC compliance and IRS tax laws

Companies with referral programs need to be aware of the various laws and regulations around solicitations (CAN SPAM), promotions, and rewarding. There are two regulatory considerations companies need to keep in mind:

First, the Federal Trade Commission recently passed a law under its 16 CFR Part 255, “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”  The regulation states if a person makes a post on any social network (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or LinkedIn) and stands to gain a profit from the endorsement or testimonial, he or she must at a minimum include a statement such as, “This is a paid endorsement,” or “#paidad.” Your referral program Terms and Conditions should include this language so you can be certain your program is compliant with the most current statutes and you are protected against legal action.

Second, depending on the amount of the referral reward and the rigor it takes to achieve it, companies need to consider how much money any one customer could potentially earn in a calendar year.  The reason for this is simply the IRS. If a customer receives over $599.00 per year in rewards, to be compliant with US tax laws the company who paid those rewards must collect a W-9 from that person and submit a 1099 to the IRS on the customer’s behalf.  There are referral program vendors that will track 1099 information and disseminate the paperwork as needed to be certain you stay compliant with US tax laws. Be sure to ask if these are features of their platform when talking with a potential referral program vendor.

” The vendor needs to establish a demand generation closed-loop process that results in the partner getting qualified and ready-to-buy leads.”

If you’re building a channel, it’s always best practice to follow best practices. In an excerpt from Impartner’s eBook, “The Ultimate Field Guide to Starting a Channel,” here are the five key steps for success:

1. Solidify and clearly explain the policies you will employ within the program.

The first step is to establish a strategy, then establish policies, then the program. It’s important for senior leadership to understand the channel and the depth of these requirements or leaders risk fast employee burnout or over-commitment and under-resourced initiatives which ultimately fail or do not produce the expected growth. For example, your strategy could be to have a direct relationship with enterprise corporations. Therefore, you would have a policy that states when an opportunity would be taken directly or with a partner. And your program would state the rules of engagement that support the policy.

You could also use deal registration as an aspect to your program to enforce some of the policies. If your strategy were for enterprise accounts to be managed directly, your policy would ask for partners to register opportunities to help identify anything that supports the vendor’s enterprise direct touch strategy. And, your program would enforce the best practices of deal registration with extra benefits to drive that type of behavior.

Channel conflict is another set of critical up-front policies to establish. Hand in hand with deal registration, you will need to set forth the policies on how you will handle involvement with your direct sales force and indirect sales force. Within your program, you may establish a list of accounts that are known direct, or rules for which a partner may then work a direct account. Whatever you do, be sure they are clear and are identified early in the sales process, to avoid any duplication of efforts or worst yet false starts or fast partner failures. Channel / Indirect – Direct / and Partner – Partner conflict is one of the prime reasons partnerships fail to produce expected targets.

2. Invest in end-user demand generation for partners.

The pace of business these days is incredibly fast, and the fastest way to revenue is when vendors assist in finding and somewhat qualifying leads for partners to engage with.

You may think of this as “priming the pump” but it really has become the best practice way of getting partners on board and getting to revenue quickly. The “best practice” is a co-marketing/co-demand generation with the channel partner. The vendor needs to establish a demand generation closed-loop process that results in the partner getting qualified and ready-to-buy leads.

3. Make systematic and inter-organizational trust and collaboration a competency in your organization.

Collaboration should be the primary vehicle for progress versus command and control. According to an annual CEO study, collaboration — both deliberate collaborative business practices and processes emerge as a strategic competency. Collaborative business practices have emerged as a new ISO11000 standard – turning it from an art to a science – and aimed at ensuring channel partnerships and strategic alliances are built on strategic business practices from the onset.

4. Ensure that you have the highest level of skills within your team.

You can assess the current team’s skills against a channel/partner competency model, recognize hiring gaps, and/or prepare to elevate the skills of the teams where necessary. Theresa Caragol Consulting’s new 2017 Competency Model established that as a best practice for the requirements for our next generation CAMs, they should cover the 4 main areas of knowledge for a CAM: Business Acumen, Industry Expertise, Deep Channel Expertise and Collaboration Acumen / EQ. This quadrant and the sub-skills for each can serve as a checklist for the types of individuals you will need to have leading and working on your indirect channel initiative.

5. Protect all of the above with a technology and systems support plan including PRM.

Often, building this “Channel Technology Stack” is an afterthought and companies go wrong and end up with more costs later. As the indirect model expands into new geographies, partner types, customer use cases, and channel business models – the one common link is the support infrastructure.

It’s important to make automation decisions from the onset that will grow with your success. For example, consider a Customer Relationship Management tool that integrates well with your Partner Relationship Management tool, and yet further integrates with Incentive Automation or Demand Generation Platform. Evaluate your options available, check references and talk to existing clients; and consider the companies you are buying them from to ensure they are capitalized well for the long term. For example, you may choose to work with companies who have established relationship and partnership with other vendors in a potential “stack” of a solution you are taking to market. Taking these factors into consideration can save you time, money, and aggravation as your channel strategy and programs scale with success.

Want to learn more about building a channel? Get your complete copy of Impartner’s Ultimate Field Guide to Starting a Channel here.

Blog Series: The Old Man and the Channel – with Olivier Choron, Managing Director EMEA, Impartner

Part 1: Build it and They Will Come!

Background:

After more than 20 years in the channel, I sometimes feel like Santiago, Ernest Hemingway’s hero, unlucky in my quest to get the big fish. For Santiago, this was taken literally, for me, it’s been all about getting the best from my channel program.

During my voyage, across the seas and within my programs, I have accumulated a large net of ideas, strong-minded opinions, hobgoblins and dreams about what truly drives success in the channel.

Failing is part of the process

How many of us have created what we thought was the best program, campaign, or tool, only to see them inexplicably flop? For me, and I will be frank, this has happened a few too many times.

I have always considered it to be part of being in the channel; always assuming we didn’t have enough budget to make it big, and assuming our channel partners had too many other fish to fry.

The trick is to recognize our failures and rearrange to make situations work in our favor.

Invest in yourself

Very rarely did I invest enough energy, budget, or activities to drive partners to my ‘best thing since sliced bread’. I did just enough to tick the box and launch. Even then, I’ll admit I didn’t do a good enough job to communicate the relevant value proposition and tailor it to my audiences.

I created great partner programs, but partners were confused. I created limitless incentives, but nobody took part. I created dreamy campaigns, but not many bother to run them.

Although I had the ‘best thing’, nobody really knew about it or knew enough about it to care, hence the flop.

One size rarely fits all

There is no excuse. It can be expensive and time-consuming to communicate to partners, but it is crucial to put a strategy and action plan together for launch and beyond. We must understand and segment our partner audiences to deliver meaningful messages. We need to create ‘personalized’ content and translate when needed. We need to build emails and repeat this process until the message gets through to our partners. In today’s age, our traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ activities need to change.

Focus on people

Don’t go mad and over-do it. Your channel partners are people, with different backgrounds, knowledge, needs, and understandings. Don’t slice the cake in too many small portions or you will not be able to deliver anything. At the very least, focus on those who sell, market, are technical and who direct and manage. Focus on the groups that tend to be very active and even those who are dormant.

Focus on what makes your partners tick. Hone in on their interests and effectiveness of your messaging.

Let them decide

You have all the information about how much and what they sell, and this is in your CRM. Don’t make the mistake of assuming what they want. The CEO of a channel partner organization could be very technical, another could be salesy. Assuming they are all equals and treated the same way could lead to more mistakes and a failed communication approach.

It may be helpful to build a preference page for your communications. A place where your partners can choose exactly what they want to hear from you and when.

Once you have this information, you can start to automate your communication processes and deliver targeted messages, which you can use at launch and post-launch.

Application Tactics:

• Scrap your existing email platforms – none allow you to customize content to partners, or at least easily (considering you have many partner types/ tiers, countries you cover, languages you need to support).
• Use our own News on Demand (this is the biased part) – this will allow you to share news based upon the recipients’ selections (in their Communications Preferences Centre), delivering email communications when requested, without the need for any HTML development. With News on Demand, you can deliver 100% personalized and targeted newsletters and emails to each user, in a highly cost-effective manner.
• Think about your audiences – do they all need to receive sales, technical, marketing and other news? Write different content for the selected audiences.
• Tailor your content on the portal or landing page – with the right PRM platform like our own Impartner PRM (yes, I am biased again), you should be able to tailor content based on job roles or any other partner segmentation options you have.
• Communicate, communicate and communicate – never stop; partners have typically little time to give you. It’s not that they don’t like you, but they work with many other suppliers and have their own job to do. So, communicate with them until you are happy with the results or until they say ‘enough’; you will catch them once and this may be enough to hook them in.
• Think all media – don’t just focus on emails; think about your partner account managers and the phone calls they make every day (and make sure they talk about your campaign); think about your distributors (and make sure they are equipped to talk about your campaign); think about social; think about paper-based media too (if your campaign is big enough).
• Track and track again – remember, you need to make sure they come and visit the page or program you want them to see or participate in. Don’t be satisfied until you know!

About the author

Olivier Choron joined Impartner in June 2018 when Impartner acquired Tremolo Software. Olivier was the CEO and Founder at Tremolo, the provider of News on Demand and Social on Demand products, which have now been added to the unique Impartner PRM portfolio. He is currently the Managing Director for EMEA.

With 25+ years of channel marketing expertise, gained in Europe and in the US, at companies such as 3Com and Nortel Networks, Olivier is a well-recognized figure in the channel. Having also run a channel marketing services firm for 12 years in the UK, Olivier has advised many organizations on how to best structure their channel programs and how to best enable their partners, including Adobe, Vodafone, Trend Micro, Zyxel, and Samsung, among others.

Olivier holds a ‘Diplôme d’Ingénieur’ in computer science from the ENSI de Caen (France), and a master’s degree in electronic engineering from the University of Kent (UK).

“The success of your products greatly depends on the ownership of certain duties.”

In today’s market, the true revenue hero is the channel. You might have noticed the number of Partner Relationship Management solutions decreasing over the years, but the buying decision can still be difficult for some to make.

World-leading companies like Fortinet, Rackspace, and Xerox have made Impartner PRM the industry standard by using our solution to power their Partner Portals. While these companies know a contemporary PRM solution can take your optimization and operations to the next level, several companies are still finding themselves falling behind.

We’ve outlined a few ways to identify if you’ve made the wrong PRM decision and what you can do to get your teams to focus back to growing and scaling the partnerships that truly drive success.

1. Lack of Personalization – In today’s tech world a tailored online experience is expected. From website recognition to targeted advertisements, each step of our buying process is customized to fit a persona. If your portal cannot recognize your partners, personalize their experience, or offer up resources to help them optimize their relationship with you, you’re ultimately falling behind the competition. Impartner PRM provides a fully customized, contemporary experience that allows your partners to optimize their relationships and digital interactions.
2. Who Owns the Roadmap? – The success of your products greatly depends on the ownership of certain duties. Your partner portal should be held to the same standards. While the first few days of your portal launched without a glitch, you are finding without help from your IT team, you cannot make basic functional updates. Your portal will inevitably fall behind, and the resources required to keep it up to date are time-consuming for your internal team, not to mention the cost to use your original vendor.
3. You Cannot Keep Up with Updates – While a single-tenant PRM solution may seem tempting, but this means every portal is standalone. When a product or security update needs to be implemented, your vendor must update them one by one. These kinds of updates can put you behind weeks or even months. Impartner’s pure-play PRM solution creates a frictionless, world-class customer experience at every step of the partner experience (PX).

The temptation to implement a solution that appears to save you time and money is easy to fall for, but don’t be fooled by the other companies. Find out for yourself why you should choose Impartner.

Impartner is the fastest to implement, with the ability to have you up and running is a few as 14 days. Impartner is trusted by some of the world’s largest companies with some of the most complex networks. Impartner integrates seamlessly with any major CRM and third-party application and legacy system.  It’s no wonder Impartner has outlived other solutions, making its way to number one.

For more ways to identify if you’ve made the wrong PRM decision, you can download our eBook here: Top 13 Signs You’ve Made the Wrong PRM Decision

“On average, a company can take six to 12 months to build a homegrown portal. “

If your current partner portal isn’t helping optimize your partners’ performance, it is likely costing you money and time. Wouldn’t it be nice if that time you are spending building a portal could be distributed to a cause that could improve your sales and in turn make you more money?

We want to improve your company’s workday! Below we have provided insight into why building your own partner portal will only contribute to the ‘work harder’ model, and how investing in a PRM solution can advance your company sales right now.

1. Stop Wasting Time

On average, a company can take six to 12 months to build a homegrown portal. This means several departments in your own company are taking time away from their everyday duties, which contribute to your bottom line. With workflows and field information fully integrated into the system, the level of effort essential to managing a PRM solution would require the work of one full-time employee.

2. Stop Wasting Money

Portals need infrastructure – servers, security, configuration, redundancy, and availability, and that is just the beginning. Consider for a moment, what it would cost to build, host, and support a portal that managed thousands of partners around the world.

3. Stop Creating Chaos

There is much more to a partner portal than just a website. Decide now, to implement proven strategies and effective structure for your channel programs. The value of your company should reflect in your partner portal. Utilizing an expert will save you time by applying best practices which will ultimately accelerate your indirect sales.

In a world of DIY and instant gratification, building your own portal may seem tempting. The outcome isn’t worth the execution time, the risk of poor integration, or the loss of focus on your teams. Do your own research and find out how you can have a PRM tool up and running with a complete partner portal in as few as 14 days. Click here for more details.

“CRM solutions are built for direct, one-to-one sales, and not multi-touch channel sales.”

Vendor proliferation is something that every company works to manage. In today’s credit-card swipe technology buying environment, it’s easy to end up with too many solutions that don’t integrate well and result in siloed data.

The opposite is true as well. With big vendors like Salesforce, which serves as the CRM platform for the large majority of corporations, the temptation from IT is to insist business-unit buyers use other affiliated technologies from Salesforce. It seems easy because they are “already an approved vendor,” and another solution is just a box check.

When it comes to PRM – Partner Relationship Management – this is one technology where channel managers need to push back. CRM solutions are built for direct, one-to-one sales, and not multi-touch channel sales.

It may sound tempting on the surface to not go through the effort of vetting other solutions in the market and go with Salesforce Communities (Salesforce’s PRM solution). We’ve found numerous companies are doing RFPs and turning to Impartner PRM, the best-selling, most award-winning pure-play PRM in the world.

Besides being born for the complexities of the indirect channel, here are three key reasons why you should choose Impartner:

1. Impartner PRM does NOT require a 3rd party implementer – because Impartner does all the work
2. Our PRM deploys in as few as 14 days, vs an average of 9 to 12 months with other companies
3. Impartner charges by partner, not partner member, costing about 8 times less than Salesforce per year

• Don’t let those “free” license years fool you, you’ll end up paying the price after 12 months

Xerox, Fortinet, Sophos, and other leading corporations have turned to Impartner PRM to power their channel for those reasons and more. We are so sure we’ll be your first choice after you take a second look, we’ll help you with your RFP:

• Click here if you want us to help fill out your RFP.
• If you’re just getting started, click here for an RFP form for you to collect your information.

Impartner: #RFPFodder at the start, the choice of world-leading corporations in the end.