Proven ideas that yield greater returns every time

By T.C. Doyle

Congratulations on your latest round of funding! Now that you have an influx of capital, do you a solid plan for putting the money to use? You’re going to need one given the expectations that likely came with the new investment.

While you may have some ideas for spending the money, there are better ways to invest it than buying Herman-Miller chairs or leasing new office space. Experts agree that the best way to spend your new funding is to invest in things and activities that will help your organization address its top priorities, which typically fit into one of three categories:

• Growth
• Operational excellence
• Product development

Some business experts and management consultants break these categories down into subgroups or elevate one or more items such as “workforce productivity” into the main group. Regardless, most business priorities fall into one of these basic categories. What’s interesting is how digital innovation can help organizations achieve their aims in each of these areas.

If your organization does business with partners or plans to in the future, then you will want to understand how partner automation technology can help your organization overcome challenges and achieve objectives against your list of priorities. Having this information at the ready will help you, your go-to-market leaders and even your executive leadership team make more informed decisions when it comes to spending your new capital wisely.

Growth Priorities

Improve business growth. Attract and retain new customers. Improve speed to new markets. If these growth priorities sound familiar, then you’re like most organizations, according to market researcher Techaisle, which produces an annual list of business and technology priorities and challenges for various organizational segments including SMBs. (Techaisle considers SMBs as organizations with between 1 and 999 employees.)

While some companies go it alone, the majority of SMBs and mid-size enterprises work with partners when it comes to executing their go-to-market strategies. Consider: more than 75% of global trade flows through business partners, according to Forrester. This is despite the growth of vendor marketplaces and other direct-to-consumer sales efforts.

Partners can help you expand your influence in new geographies, customer segments, vertical niches and targeted accounts where you believe growth lies. They can bolster your technical aptitude and amplify your marketing efforts, too. Furthermore, partners can introduce you to customers with whom they have existing relationships with.

But to achieve these benefits, you have to put in sufficient infrastructure to support your partners. This includes an investment into a partner relationship management (PRM) platform that can scale with you as you grow. Our research has found that organizations that invest in a PRM grow 32.3%, on average, after deploying partner automation technology. What is more, 77% report a return on their investment in less than 18 months.

If business acceleration is what you seek, then you need new growth mechanisms. Without them, you will never live up to your investors’ expectations.

Partners can provide you with new lift. But their contributions require new investments, commitment and expertise.

Operational Excellence

When it comes to operational excellence, companies have a long list of priorities. Chief among them is reducing costs and improving products and processes.

After deploying a PRM, Impartner customers report reducing their operational costs by 29%, on average. Another 78% claim that their PRM has provided them a competitive advantage in their respective market. Here’s insight as to why.

Unless your company has a truly differentiated innovation or idea, your partners have choices when it comes to with whom they align. While maximizing profitability is always top of mind, it isn’t always a determining factor when it comes to joining a partner program. In fact, CompTIA research finds that having “an established partner program with solid resources” rates higher among channel partners than “compensation plans in place that maximize the profitability of partners.”

Industry research also finds that one-quarter of channel partners will not work with a vendor that does not fully prioritize a seamless, workable partner experience.

For business practitioners, “a seamless, workable partner experience” translates into automation technology that reduces if not eliminates friction when it comes to partner onboarding, deal registration and market development funds (MDF) management just to name a few things.

If your company doesn’t provide friction-free experiences, it will struggle to attract the best partners in any given market. It will also wrestle trying to meet the expectations of those that it does enlist.

There’s more when it comes to automation and operational excellence: In addition to serving as a system of record (SoR) for all things partner-related, a PRM is a key component in a modern go-to-market technology architecture that also includes a customer relationship management (CRM) platform and a marketing automation platform (MAP). With a PRM and complementary adjuncts, you can efficiently extend your marketing through partners, track end customer leads in a closed-loop system and reward key constituents appropriately based on their contributions and engagement.

Product development

While it might sound like a stretch to think that a PRM platform can actually inform your product development agenda, it isn’t. Here’s why.

Partners not only give you sales leverage in a given market, they also provide invaluable feedback and insight. Consider: partners work with dozens if not hundreds of customers on average. They have tremendous insight on customer buying habits, business priorities and best practices. They understand better than most the positive impact that new ideas and innovations have on a market, and why some ideas fall flat.

Engaged partners will gladly share these insights with trusted allies who promise confidentiality and complementary insights for helping mutual customers. Partners will also serve as more than sounding boards; in many instances they will participate in beta test programs and help develop new use cases for your ideas and innovations.

If that sounds appealing to you, then remember that extracting these invaluable benefits requires partner intimacy and loyalty — the kind that a world-class partner automation platform promotes.

Which brings us back to you and your latest investment. Did you know that it comes at a time when investment in U.S. companies is setting all-time records? It has. Take startups, which enjoyed an inflow of $150 billion for the first half of 2021, according to a report from PitchBook. That sum is more than what startups have received in every full year before 2020.

This means that in addition to you, your rivals may have received some funding of late. So, the race is on, in other words, to see who can scale the fastest.

No doubt you are considering a wealth (no pun intended) of options for spending your new money. But before you commit to one thing or another, do yourself a favor and investigate how partner automation can help put that money to wise use.

Ask for an Impartner demo today.

While an investment in partner automation technology won’t provide the immediate comfort that a new Aeron chair will, it will put your organization in a better position.

Now that’s what we call sitting pretty.

Partner needs are evolving. So are their priorities. Are you optimized accordingly? Compare yourself to this handy checklist.

With an eye toward 2022 and beyond, the business world is looking at new priorities. Is your partner portal up for the task?

In this article, we highlight several priorities that have emerged from our conversations with customers, business partners and industry thought leaders alike. From our interactions and research, it’s clear that a change in market conditions is leading to change in thinking. Whereas global events in 2020 put an emphasis on “resiliency” and “adaptability,” new market realties have pushed “growth” and “experiences” to the top of corporate agendas.

Consider a May report from Gartner. In Gartner’s 2021 CEO Survey, 60% of CEOs said they expect their organization’s revenue to return to 2019 levels by the end of 2021. Another 30% of CEOs said they expect a resurgence by 2022. An increase in Covid-19 infections could render expectations moot, much as they did at the beginning of 2020. But if current indications are correct, then your channel strategy will need to be updated accordingly. This includes your partner portal.

Here are five areas to consider as you begin planning for 2022 and beyond.

Partner Experience

In all but a few product and service categories and regardless of industry, business partners have choices when it comes to who they work with. With velocity foremost in many partners’ minds, ease-of-doing business has emerged as a top priority. How important? Consider what the tech trade association CompTIA reported: “For a vast majority of partners, the ease of doing business ranks highest in the why-should-we-work-with-this-vendor department. It ranks higher than even the profit-making opportunity in many cases.”

Is your partner portal designed appropriately? Can partners quickly find the information they need, or do they encounter friction at every turn? How many times do you ask them to log in as they navigate through your pages and applications? Does your homepage surface the information that matters most to them? Or do you make them dig? Do you bombard them with customer-oriented information, or provide a more tailored, personalized experience?

If you don’t like your answers, then your company may be competing at disadvantage.

Partner Performance, Reporting and Analytics

Every channel chief knows the key to competing today is actionable information. This requires real-time data that you can access at a glance and can put into a report that can be easily scrutinized. There’s simply no way to do proper business planning without this kind of intelligence. But not every portal tool gives up this kind of information easily. With some tools, it can feel as though the portal were working against you to conceal the data you need. Not Impartner’s Business Intelligence (BI) engine and Channel Intel+ technology, which have been designed to seamlessly provide channel business leaders with data that drives revenue and increases partner profitability.

With Impartner PRM, everything from partner segmentation to deal registration to onboarding and more has been optimized around two vectors: making things frictionless for partners and providing you the actionable data you need to grow at scale.

Integration with Key Business Platforms

Study after study reveals the degree that customers fast-tracked digital transformation projects in 2020 as a result of the global pandemic. But experts note that “most C-suites are frustrated and disappointed” with outcomes. Projects take too long, cost too much and deliver too little.

Why? Integration challenges are a big issue. Customers no longer want to mash together software components that do not mesh easily. This goes for your partner automation platform.

Impartner gets this. We know that business runs on Microsoft Office, Salesforce CRM and other tech standbys. That’s why our PRM integrates in real-time with Salesforce CRM (we were the first to do so) and Microsoft Dynamics. We also integrate easily with other key platforms.

We understand what being a system of record is all about and how it relates to velocity. Let’s face it: having to wait hours or even minutes for your batched data to “sync” can mean winning or losing a competitive bid.

That won’t cut it 2022. Integrate or fall behind, we say.

Expandability

Once you embrace a modern PRM, you’re going to love how a modern, integrated automation platform can transform your business and increase partner satisfaction. But you’re likely to want more.

For example, you’re likely to want to better coordinate marketing activities with partners to ensure that your messages are delivered consistently and appropriately. This means better technology, the kind that through channel marketing automation (TCMA) provides for.

In addition to communicating through partners, you’ll also want to communicate to them more effectively. For that, you’ll need a purpose-built tool such as Impartner’s News on Demand. There’s more, including Impartner’s Social on Demand, Google Ads for the Channel and Point of Sale Management.

As you grow your channel, you’ll want to increase the capability of your partner portal. You’ll want a platform that expands and grows with you, in other words. Impartner does this seamlessly no matter your size or industry.

Best Practices

If you’re not familiar with the term, you’ll likely hear more about “opinionated software” as you consider your automation plans and priorities. While “opinionated” conjures up bad connotations in most instances, it means “informed” and “experienced” when it comes to digital automation. Take Impartner PRM, for example.

In addition to being integrated, customizable and secure, Impartner PRM is also informed. We built our software to leverage best practices we’ve gleaned from hundreds of implementations with world-leaders in business from multiple industries over two decades. This includes how we help customers onboard partners, train and certify them, share leads and even reward partners. When you invest in Impartner partner automation, in other words, you’re getting business best practices baked into every module you leverage.

With that, you can be assured that you are investing with an organization that is as focused on your success as you are.

Automation for a Changing World

In the post-pandemic era, speed and experiences will loom large in the hearts and minds of business partners everywhere. Your partner portal, thus, must optimize accordingly.

If that sounds daunting to you, rest easy; it isn’t if you have the right partner committed to your channel success.

See for yourself how partner automation can help increase velocity and improve experiences for your channel partners. Click here for your Impartner demo today.

And for more on prioritization, don’t miss “Priorities for Channel Partners in 2021 and Beyond.”

Trends, opportunities and challenges that are driving the need for greater automation

If you work with channel partners, there’s a strong chance that your world has seen more upheaval in the past two years than in the previous five. Everything from business economics to technological innovation to customer buying habits is undergoing change. Navigating this post-pandemic period will be a significant challenge, unless you have some help to guide you.

That’s why we are here.

Here’s an overview of the top business priorities that channel partners have heading into 2022 and beyond. We present them now so you can factor these realities into your future partner plans and programs. Note: most trends examined below formed before the pandemic set in. They will likely have significant influence long after Covid-19 and its variants subside.

Let’s start with a big one, the future of work, careers and organizations.

Step into the Future of Work

Channel partners face a number of challenges and opportunities, none more pressing the aligning their organizations and capabilities to the broad concept known as “the future of work.” Thanks to the pandemic, technological advances and shifting social norms, we can safely say that the future of work will be more mobile, virtual and automated than before. It will also be more measured, decentralized and specialized.

“Companies are now looking at a permanent shift in how they work — reassessing workflows, processes, business logic, and even real estate investments,” writes Forrester Research analyst Jay McBain.

The implications for channel partners couldn’t be greater. Regardless of industry, they will have to rethink their own workplace realities not to mention retool to better serve customers. Consider McKinsey & Co., whose research finds that between 20-25% of workforces in advanced economies could work from home between three and five days a week. “This represents four to five times more remote work than before the pandemic and could prompt a large change in the geography of work, as individuals and companies shift out of large cities into suburbs and small cities,” according to McKinsey research.

In addition to new workplace norms, channel partners are working to better understand how occupations are changing. By 2030, virtually every occupation, for example, will be influenced or directly involved with digital technology, making every worker a knowledge worker in some fashion. What is more, as much of a quarter of the workforce will seek new occupations — not just new jobs — as a result of all the change. While estimates vary, one study predicts that nearly two-thirds of children today will eventually work in new jobs that don’t yet exist.

In addition to individuals, organizations themselves are changing. According to Gartner Research, “Companies will focus on expanding their geographic diversification and investment in secondary markets to mitigate and manage risk in times of disruption. This rise in complexity of size and organizational management will create challenges for leaders as operating models evolve.”

Thanks to these and other changes, channel partners of all stripes are working hard to plan and prepare for the future of work for 2022 and beyond.

Embrace disruptive innovation

In the tech world, thousands upon thousands of managed service providers (MSPs) have desks dedicated to tech specialists whose job it is to respond to customer trouble tickets all day long. Initially, many MSPs were cool to the idea of handing some of that work to artificial intelligence (AI) bots that could respond to low-level customer requests such as resetting a password. Many MSPs owners worried about the level of service the bots would provide to customers, and the toll such bots would have on workers who feared for their jobs.

Fast-forward to today. More MSP owners are comfortable with the increased sophistication of bots and more MSPs engineers are, too. The bots provide good, base-level service and free engineers up for more advanced duties. It’s a case of disruptive innovation that works for everyone.

Not all disruptive ideas, of course, do. (Taxi drivers and homeowners’ associations aren’t fans of Uber and Airbnb for a reason.) But where possible, channel partners have put disruptive innovations at the top of their lists of priorities both for themselves and their own customers. A third of tech industry channel partners who have added new vendors to their line cards of late say they have done so to “enter new markets like emerging tech,” according to tech industry trade association CompTIA.

In pharmaceuticals, channel partners are embracing new pharmacovigilance technologies that help prevent the adverse effects of incompatible drug prescriptions in care environments. A few years ago, such technology threatened Big Pharma middlemen but no longer. Channel partners are availing themselves of the latest innovations so they can offer unparalleled levels of services to their customers.

Then there are software marketplaces, which many tech partners are trying to figure out. Once thought to be a disruptive threat to their worlds, technology resellers now recognize that software marketplaces serve as a complement to their efforts to sell software. Many have embraced them to address specific customer needs, freeing them up to focus on higher-level deals and integrations.

Leverage new business models

What do HPE, Dell, Cisco, Nutanix and other tech giants have in common? They all have committed to offer most if not all of their tech portfolios as-a-service within a mere few years.

The reason is straightforward, according to research from The Alexander Group, a market consultancy that caters to enterprise vendors and buyers of technology. A late 2020 study by The Alexander Group found that everything-as-a-service (XaaS) market leaders are growing revenue from existing customers by more than 20% annually and improving their net revenue retention by 11%.

Overall, sales of infrastructure-as-service, which includes AWS, Google and Azure, are growing 40% year-over-year whiles sales of software-as-s-service are growing 30% annually. This compares to modest growth rates for products such as servers, routers and more.

This is a massive business model transformation for vendors and channel partners, alike. In fact, experts believe it is the single largest transformation in technology in two decades. “New XaaS revenue models require post-land investments across the entire customer life-cycle and are critical for continued growth and scale,” says The Alexander Group.

For channel partners in tech, this means a reduced emphasis on product reselling and more focus subscription sales, which is good because the latter provide a more predictable revenue stream and a more durable economic model than a big-ticket, transaction-oriented business.

More than semantics, the transformation to XaaS has wide-ranging implications for how channel partners staff, fund, grow and manage their organizations. Rather than product margins, more channel partners look to make money by monetizing their influence, says Wayne Monk, senior vice president of global alliances and channel sales at tech integrator and consultant ASG Technologies. Writing for VARinsights in January 2021, Monk says “some partners are shifting their business to provide more advisory and architecture-oriented services, while others are electing to innovate and sell their solutions.”

In addition to what they offer, channel partners are rethinking how they offer their value. Consider the insurance industry, which is greatly dependent on independent agents known as “intermediaries.” At the beginning of the pandemic, roughly 90% of life insurance agents’ sales conversations and nearly 70% of ongoing client interactions were done in person, according to McKinsey findings. By May 2020, that figured dropped to just 5%.

In a report on the industry, McKinsey addressed the broader and longer-term impacts that external forces are having on the business models and best practices of insurance channel partners: “Agents accustomed to in-person interactions are rapidly recalibrating to provide uninterrupted service to clients who may be facing severe health or economic challenges. These agents are also rethinking how they build relationships with prospective clients as most rely on in-person meetings.”

Deliver superior customer experiences

For decades, study after study revealed that consumers loathe shopping for cars. But year after year, car dealerships clung to the No. 1 thing car buyers hated most: price negotiation.

Then the pandemic set it. When it did, consumers turned en masse to online buying sites such as TrueCar, Carvana and Vroom, which offer a haggle-free sales experience and at-home delivery. To promote its emphasis on superior customer experiences, Vroom ran a TV ad during the 2021 Super Bowl that parodied traditional car dealer experiences.

While some saw the move as an afront to their businesses, some dealers changes policies to provide better customer experiences. This includes Bill Camastro, a dealer and partner in Gold Coast Cadillac in New Jersey. Camastro told Automotive News, “I hope every car dealer in the country saw that commercial, to be honest with you. All it’s going to do is improve them.”

Turns out he is right. Since the pandemic, more car dealers have embraced “no-haggle” selling and beefed-up other services including free-loaner cars, free customer pickup and online appointment scheduling.

Intermediaries in other collaborative industries are similarly pulling out all stops to elevate the customer experiences (CX) they provide. To better respond to customer tech support inquiries, tech channel partners are investing in professional services automation (PSA) platforms to a greater extent. PSA technology has been shown to translate into a 48% reduction in customer dissatisfaction and a 28% improvement in channel partner response time, according to a Forrester/Datto study

As their business models shift and the need to provide superior customer experiences increases, more tech channel partners are embracing what tech publication VARStreet professes: “Customer experience is the impression customers have of your brand through all interactions across the entire customer lifecycle.” Ditto for their enterprises. Today, more channel partners believe customer experience is the responsibility of every person in their organization, according to the publication. More than a third say it’s the single most important competitive differentiator that they have, according to CompTIA.

Not surprisingly, more tech industry channel partners are retraining their sales staffs and support personnel to embrace this new reality. Salespeople, for example, are being retrained to be more empathetic to customers because their duties have grown beyond simply selling; they now include retaining customers, in many instances.

Develop more sophisticated marketing and branding capabilities

For decades, intermediaries in many industries relied on the brands of others to attract customers’ attention.

Watch dealers, for example, counted on Rolex and Omega to bring people into their stores. Tech channel partners counted on Microsoft, Cisco and HP to essentially do the same.

But times have changed. The idea that channel partners aren’t really interested in marketing is a maxim that is an outdated as a business without a website. While it bucks conventional thinking, marketing spending as percent of revenue has actually increased among tech channel partners in recent years. Traditionally less than 5% of revenue in a given year, some partners now spend upwards of 7% or more of revenue promoting their brands. Smaller channel partners, in particular, spend a greater percent of revenue on marketing than their larger channel counterparts, on average.

Interestingly, building their own brand doesn’t necessarily come at the expense of building a vendor’s brand. Just the opposite. Research from the tech trade association CompTIA found in 2021 that nearly one-third of channel partners want to tap into digital the marketing expertise and social media know-how of vendor partners. In addition, channel partners want to “appear bigger and more sophisticated to the customer” thanks to new digital capabilities.

To burnish their images, channel partners in various industries are hiring more branding and marketing specialists. They are investing in new tools. And they are rethinking everything from the language they use to attract customers to the way they measure engagement and the journeys they create for customers.

These journeys have led them to affiliate with a variety of new influencers and thought leaders. In the tech industry alone, they are nearly 150 different social media groups for VARs, MSPs and other channel partners, according to Forrester Research.

Ultimately, what channel partners want is a way to attract new business that doesn’t detract from their ability to serve existing customers. Scaling, thus, has become a priority in everything they do.

Which brings us to our last 2022 channel partners priority: rationalizing an internal tech stack. That, of course, is the single most important lever a channel partner can pull to facilitate their ability to operate at scale.

Rationalize an internal technology stack

The adage that you cannot run a channel on spreadsheets is taking hold among channel partners in several industries. In tech, for example, some channel partners have gorged on tech automation — so much so that they are now trying to rationalize and standardize on a tech stack that’s optimized to help advance them in key areas including service automation, marketing, vendor relationship management, sales and more. Others — the bulk of channel partners — are just getting started.

Regardless of where they are in their journey, channel partners are eager to establish some norms and standards. Again, take a typical tech channel partner today such as an MSP.

In today’s market, an MSP typically runs its services division with a PSA and/or a remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform. It will also leverage a customer relationship management (CRM) platform such as Salesforce to help its sales team. And it will leverage marketplaces and dashboards provided to it by key distributors.

In addition to these tools, MSPs typically rely on one or more dashboards to monitor their cybersecurity operations and others for marketing. The most important tools for executive leadership are partner relationship management (PRM) platforms that provide business leaders a window into their sales pipelines, employee certifications, through channel marketing activities and more.

All of these compete for the time and energy of partners who have no time to slow down or patience for poorly designed interfaces. Nor can they afford to invest in redundant tools that confuse rather than simplify. Consider, for example, questions raised by tech consultant BCG: “Does the fourth collaboration software help, or does it just confuse us…? Finding the right balance is essential to making Smart Work productive.”

Not surprisingly, Monk from ASG Technologies believes the tech industry is entering an era in which channel partners are leveraging “hyper-automation.”

“To service these new demands from end customers, many channel partners are transitioning to hyper-automation, which is imperative to delivering a digital service because it builds resilience and improves the experience. Automation is top of mind because people aren’t in offices or data centers anymore. They’re confronted with manual tasks and human dependencies and need to stitch them together in an automated way,” Monk writes in VARinsights. “In the race to a digital-first, virtual-first world, partners that can keep pace will pull ahead.”

Which brings us to your company.

When it comes to your tech stack, are you helping or hurting yourself when it comes supporting your channel partners? To be sure you’re aligned with their priorities for 2022 and beyond, do yourself a favor and sign up for a demo from Impartner today. Let the market leader in PRM show you what hyper automation should look like and what it can do for your business.

For more on channel and programs, be sure to read, “Seven Signs Your Partner Program Is Too Complicated.”

Rigid requirements, underutilized assets and unused market development funds. If your company suffers from even one of these, then your partner program may be too complicated.

By T.C. Doyle

A new global study reveals that one-quarter of channel partners will not work with a vendor that does not “fully prioritize a seamless, workable partner experience.”

Does that sound like you?

If the question makes you even the least bit uncomfortable, then your channel program may be too complicated. If partners have to hire additional staff just to navigate your program, that’s not a sign of enthusiasm; it’s an indication of a problem in the making.

When partner programs are overly complex, satisfaction suffers and utilization declines. A better way? Simplify to improve partner experiences and focus your own thinking. “Complexity reduction helps companies simplify their strategy, organization, products, processes and information technology,” says management consultant Bain & Co.

Still not certain where you stand? Ask yourself if any of the following seven signs apply to your organization. If your program suffers from even one or two of these conditions, it may be time to streamline your program.

1. Partners sign up but then don’t engage

Ever tried to check out of a retail store only to be bombarded with requests for detailed personal information before you leave? If so, let that lingering experience guide you as you devise your onboarding process. Consider the amount of information you request at the moment of signup. A detailed business plan from a partner that has never completed a single transaction with your organization, not to mention other bits of information, is simply too much. Overwhelming partners with unnecessary questions or setting unrealistic expectations will leave new partners with a bad taste.

Also, onboarding should not take days or weeks. If you cannot capture the excitement of a new partner in the same day they demonstrate it, then you risk losing their enthusiasm.

Finally, match your demands to the value your ideas and innovations offer partners. If your company develops a simple widget that solves a specific problem, don’t expect partners to comply with rigid demands for training and certification.

2. Partners don’t dig any deeper than your portal’s homepage

When partners do not navigate past your homepage, that’s a signal that something is amiss. Likely, the problem is navigation — i.e., channel partners cannot find the materials they need to complete a task or monitor their progress with your channel program. Modern partner portals simplify navigation and make it possible for vendors to customize views for partners. With the right tools, you can create custom dashboards that surface the most relevant information that partners seek, be it information on program compliance, training updates, deal status and more. Partners love it.

Not everything can be surfaced on a homepage, obviously, so navigation to specific assets or landing pages should be unambiguously clear. What is more, resist the temptation to sell partners from within your partner portal. A partner portal is not the place for ads or marketing materials, especially information that is readily available from your public website. Unless materials are specifically devoted to partner needs and interests, do not clog your partner portal with “filler” material.

3. Leads linger in a queue or lapse from inattention

Leads are one of the most frequently requested items from partners when it comes to your partner program. But lead dissemination is not generally a best practice among vendors. To be frank, most vendors are terrible when it comes to sharing leads. Email is a big reason why.

In many instances, email is the common way vendors share leads with channel partners. When an account manager is ready, they send an email to a chosen partner. But email leaves a lot to be desired. Some emails wind up in SPAM folders. Others do not stand out and get lost in partners’ daily deluge. Even emails that get opened and read leave a lot to be desired. With an email system, there’s little way to track activity and receptivity.

In contrast, automated lead systems ask partners to accept or deny leads. Accepted leads are then tracked in an automated fashion. The bottom line is you spend an enormous amount on lead generation. Don’t let that money go to waste because you skimped on a closed-loop tracking system.

4. Partners don’t migrate to higher tiers

A recent study in the U.S. revealed that only 10% of taxpayers could correctly answer, “how many different tax brackets are there in the U.S.?” (The answer is seven.)

With some channel programs, channel partners are similarly unaware. They find tiers confusing, partner classifications inconsistent with conventional wisdom and benefits and requirements baffling. When any of these conditions occur, partners sit tight in a comfortable groove unaware that additional benefits may only be a few deals from their grasp.

If you have stagnation in your program — i.e., partners remain at one level the entire time they are affiliated with your organization — they you may have a communications problem that is bigger than any motivational challenge you face. Engaged partners will pull deals from one vendor and give it to another if there’s a reasonable advantage to be gained. Incentives that cause them to do such things could be a bigger discount, a higher after-sale rebate or better technical and marketing support.

Where possible, provide a visual reminder of where partners are in terms of program advancement. If your airline can show you where you stand within its frequent flyer program, then your partner portal should be able to do so as well.

5. MDF money goes unspent

We could write a book on the amount of money that is wasted on market development funds (MDF) — and probably pay for it its publication with unspent MDF that piles up year-after-year.

MDF programs fail for two primary reasons: complexity and rigidity. Take 2020, for example. When the pandemic disrupted work life as we know it, it was abundantly clear that MDF plans devised six months earlier were not going to help anyone. Money for golf outings in the spring? On-site customer demos with dinner and a ball game afterwards? These ideas and more had to be scrapped. In response, many vendors simply extended time horizons on certain marketing activities. But they did so without considering what the “new normal” in marketing events, campaigns and materials should look like.

If you ask partners, most will tell you that the problem they have with MDF programs is a lack of actionable information. They do not know what funds are available or what they can do with them. Worse, even when they qualify for money, they do not know how they can claim their funds or apply for reimbursements.

6. Your tech support team is inundated with portal questions

How do I reset my password? How do I update my company’s information in your partner locator? Who can help me with a certification question?

You implement a partner portal, in part, to address questions on partner programs. Alas, far too many partner program portals wind up raising more questions than they answer. While many concerns can be addressed with a basic design change or better planning, improving the overall satisfaction with your partner program and reducing complexity requires more. It requires a change in philosophy.

Think about it: your partners are highly capable, independent businesses who tend to take care of themselves. When they encounter partner programs that do not encourage or, worse, allow for self-service, antibodies deep within them surface. So change your philosophy.

Give partners the ability to update information on their own. Doing so spares your team from data entry and gives your partners a sense of control. Also, share information with partners liberally. This includes product roadmaps, competitive analyses and more. Treat them as true partners, in other words.

7. Attrition rates are too high

Lastly, do you monitor the number of partners that drift away from your program each year? Do you even know why once high-performing players ghost you? Chances are it’s not due to a lack of innovation or brand competitiveness. More often than not, it’s because your company is difficult to work with. In fact, studies show that partners will stay with vendors with competitive shortcomings so long as they are easy to deal with.

If you’re wondering where you stand with your partners, ask yourself if you could pass their “Rule of 10” test. To be relevant with a partner, you should aim to either be in a partner’s list of top 10 vendors or account for 10% of their revenue.

Lastly, clean up any messes. If it takes two weeks for a partner to get a price quote, all the benefits in the world will not make your program successful, not at the current velocity of business today. If you have a chronic and/or outsized problem, then pull out all stops to address it immediately.

In conclusion

The German food retailer Aldi is doing what few possible in the U.S.: find a niche that exists between big box stores such as Walmart and Costco, online purveyors including Amazon, and traditional grocers such as Kroger’s and Safeway. Aldi established a foothold in the U.S. with a simple formula: basic staples at fair prices in convenient locations. If you’re looking for 40 varieties of toothpaste, Aldi is not your place. But if you suffer from decision fatigue and want superior experiences, then Aldi might just have what you’re looking for.

Which brings us to your partner program. Everything should as simple as possible, but no simpler, as Albert Einstein used to say. Simplicity for the sake of simplicity isn’t your goal, in other words. Satisfaction is — the kind that is bast achieved with world-class automation that not only addresses the challenges you have today, but already anticipates the ones you will face next.

See for yourself how partner automation can help reduce complexity and elevate satisfaction among your channel partners. Click here for your Impartner demo today.

Your partners will be glad you did.

For more ideas to help improve your channel program, be sure to check out, “Growth Hacks for Pumping Up Indirect Sales.”

The answer to, “How to grow my channel?” is here

By T.C. Doyle

Whether you are new to partnering or a seasoned veteran, chances are you or one of your peers has Googled, “How to grow my channel?” If so, Impartner has answers for you.

Below are five proven ideas that will help you grow your channel no matter your industry or definition of growth. Whether you seek to grow the amount of revenue partners generate with your ideas and innovations, increase the number of partners that affiliate with your organization or even elevate the awareness of your partner program, then “Growth Hacks for Pumping Up Indirect Sales” is for you. The following includes a mix of tips on best practices that cut across several aspects of your business — from economics to program development to partner engagement.

Let’s start with a short summary and then dive into each hack more thoroughly:

1. Hone your value proposition
2. Define your partners’ journeys
3. Wage war on complexity
4. Upend your status quo
5. Automate every aspect of your channel

Hone Your Value Proposition

If you were asked by a prospective partner how they will make money with your ideas and/or innovations, could you answer succinctly? Could you also respond in significant detail? If not, then chances are you haven’t properly defined your partner value proposition, which is the sum total of why partners will want to work with you.

Your value proposition includes the economics of your partner program, the benefits it offers and even the competitive advantages it provides. While this blog will address several programmatic aspects below, your primary duty is to figure out how partners will make money with you. If you cannot see a clear path to enhanced profitability for partners, then they won’t either.

As you develop your economic model, consider two things above all others: the market landscape you compete in and the total addressable market (TAM) your products and/or services serve. If your ideas compete in a price-sensitive market with small or even negative margins, then you may have to budget for significant financial incentives for partners to get them interested. Likewise, it helps to be able to show partners any additional economic opportunity they will enjoy above and beyond selling your products and/or services. In the tech world, for example, many vendors attract partners because they can demonstrate that for every $1 worth of technology that partners sell, they enjoy an additional $4-$9s worth of additional opportunities around services and consulting.

For more on developing your partner value proposition, don’t miss, “Why Would a Partner Want to Do Business with You?”

Define Your Partners’ Journeys

Partners come in many different types and sizes. They have different business models, customer priorities and capabilities, too. Because of this, it doesn’t make sense to treat them in a monolithic way. To connect more deeply with partners, which is the key to growing your business with them, you must understand the journeys they are on and how those journeys intersect with your objectives.

Again, consider the tech community, which counts hundreds of thousands of partners in North America alone. In the tech market, tech partners look to vendors to help solve a variety of problems. Some partners need an economic powerhouse to help drive their businesses. Others need a new vendor to help ween them from unprofitable lines of business and/or outdated business models. And still others need a quick fix to address a particular customer need.

Because of these differences, your partner program should be sufficiently flexible to accommodate different partner types, but not so untamed that it offers no structure. To achieve this objective, it helps to define your potential partner types and map out what they offer both to you and require from you — their journeys, in other words.

Experts including Achieve Unite, a member of the Impartner Channel Chief Advisory Board (CCAB), agree that enablement matters as much as remuneration when it comes to partner journeys. Partners, after all, sell what they know. If you can help partners get to know you well, they will recommend your offerings more often than your competitors’.

Wage War on Complexity

No matter the researcher, study after study on partnering reveals that partners want many things from vendors, “ease of doing business” high among them.

In industry after industry, partners complain about vendor complexity and intransigence. Given how long complexity and rigidity have plagued partnering in various industries, it’s a wonder more progress hasn’t been made. That’s not to say forward-leaning leaders aren’t trying.

Consider software vendor GreyCastle. When GreyCastle decided to draw up a list of things it wanted to achieve with a reconfigured partner program, reducing complexity and unnecessary customization rose to the top of its list based on partner requests. Before it relaunched its program, GreyCastle recognized eight different partner types and allowed many variances to its standard contracts. After analysis, GreyCastle decided that this flexibility was coming at the cost of efficiency. So, it cut partner types to three. Doing so saved the company money and rewarded it with more time and energy to engage with partners in the field.

Then there’s Vertiv, a global provider of data center and communications services to global companies. When Vertiv launched a new deal registration program with Impartner automation, the company made a conscious decision to ask for less information than before. Dispensing with “nice-to-knows” and going with only “need-to-knows” helped increase the number of registered deals by several hundred million dollars.

In addition to complexity, intransigence also hampers channel growth. Consider your own list of requirements. If your ideas and innovations are complex and require special knowledge or skills to sell, then you’re likely to impose limits on who can resell your offerings and in which circumstances. In a post-pandemic world when everything from business models to staffing realities are in flux, rigid restrictions may no longer make sense outside of regulated industries.

Lastly, for a program to work properly, it must recognize that partners often belong to many programs in addition to your own. Taking this reality into consideration when devising your growth plans will pay dividends down the road.

Upend Your Status Quo

There’s an old joke about advertising that goes like this: everyone who has ever paid for advertising knows half of their investment is wasted, they just don’t know which half.

Sound familiar? It might if your organization has allocated a heap of money for market development funds (MDF) that either goes unspent or is lavished upon activities that bear no fruit.

There’s no reason to stand for this status quo today. With modern tools available to every channel program professional, you can measure the efficacy of marketing campaigns, monitor partner activities and better manage your partner investments. If you believe market your MDF is being squandered, then chances are it is.

So make changes, not based on whims and intuition, but facts and data from your PRM and other automation tools, instead. The same goes for other parts of your channel that you want to grow.

Instead of hoping that under-performing partners will suddenly one-day turn into valued contributors, consider eliminating them form your partner program altogether. Doing so will free up time and resources to lavish upon companies that make active commitments to your company, and reduce your stress levels, too.

Making these types of changes requires more than a change in policy; it may require a change in thinking. Consider: Instead of measuring success by the number of partners your organization recruits, prioritize partner sales output, instead. Far too many companies focus on the wrong metric, resulting in miscues later.

If you’re still struggling with upending the status quo, then take smaller steps before you leap. Try working with underperforming partners for two solid quarters. During this time, ply them with extra guidance and handholding. If they still don’t generate your sales, then rest assured you have done what you could and cut them loose.

Automate Every Aspect of Your Channel

The idea that you can run an ecosystem with a spreadsheet or home-grown tech stack is antiquated; you cannot at scale. It’s like trying to apply for a job today through the mail.

Today, world-class partner programs depend on world class automation. The reasons are many if not obvious. Consider findings from a study commissioned by Impartner. It found that nearly one-third of companies that automate their channel programs saw an increase in revenue. What is more, 29% enjoyed a decrease in partner-related administrative costs. The study also found that more than three-quarters of companies that automate their partner programs report a ROI in less than 18 months, while even more say they gain a competitive advantage in their respective market.

In addition to these benefits, automating your partner program provides your organization with something that spreadsheets can never faithfully offer: actionable insight that is based on real-time partner data. With these insights, vendors can make more informed decisions about resource allocation, pricing changes, marketing activities, sales rewards and more.

Then there are the partner benefits, which number many. Take onboarding.

When one Impartner global customer ditched its outdated tech stack, partner onboarding was reduced from three days to just 90 seconds. Imagine the increase in partner satisfaction this company enjoyed a result?

Today’s partner automation tools offer partners consumer-like experiences that are similar to Amazon.com or Netflix. And they do so for more than just onboarding. Today, modern partner automation platforms simplify everything from training and certification to deal registration, through channel marketing and more.

Before you launch your next program, find out what your partners’ expectations are when it comes to these disciplines. If your competitors rely on partner resource management, then you will have to, too. You cannot pump up your indirect sales with one arm tied behind your back, in other words.

Parting Thoughts

No matter how you define “grow my channel” — be it expand into new geographies, enter new vertical markets, increase sales volume through existing partners, recruit new allies, etc. — the above tips will help you in your cause. While we might be impartial, we firmly believe that automating your channel is the most important tip we can offer. We built our entire business around the idea that this is the single best way to grow a channel. We believe it now as much as we did since the day we opened our doors for business.

See for yourself how partner automation can help you answer the No. 1 question you ask yourself daily, “How to grow my channel?” Sign-up for your Impartner demo today.

You’ll be glad you did.

If you’re looking for more ideas on how to improve your channel, don’t miss this article on marketing collateral: “To Improve Partner Content, Borrow a Page from Your Drip Marketing Handbook.”

A home-grown partner automation stack thwarted Vertiv, an enterprise tech giant with more than $4 billion in annual sales and 21,000 employees, from achieving its objectives with partners. But after evaluating different tech options, Vertiv turned to PRM-leader Impartner. Now, Vertiv is poised to scale to new heights. Here’s its story.

With a decades-long legacy in enterprise infrastructure, Vertiv launched anew in 2016 with a mission to serve enterprise organizations that need help modernizing their digital connectivity, data use and infrastructure. While most of the company’s sales efforts have been direct, Vertiv was keen on building a healthy indirect business with the help of business partners. Alas, a home-grown tech stack that Vertiv relied upon to onboard, manage and reward partners wasn’t up to the task. With the company’s old technology, for example, the simple task of onboarding a new partner took three workdays — an eternity in today’s world of digital transformation.

Recognizing that it needed to make a change, Vertiv turned to Impartner. Together, the two companies embarked on a mission to launch a new partner automation platform in 30 weeks across five regions and in 17 languages. The challenge galvanized Vertiv leaders.

“Once [our executive team] saw that we were delivering on the promises of rapid deployment, then they got very excited,” says Martin Coulthard, senior global director of digital customer experience. “Their support just bred the continued success of the project.”

Coulthard credits the teamwork Vertiv established with Impartner for greatly accelerating the automation deployment. The speed, scale and attention to detail was superb, Coulthard says. And the results show.

The three days that it once took to onboard a new partner? That’s been reduced to just 90 seconds. Moreover, Impartner technology has provided Vertiv a way to extend consumer-like experiences to thousands of partners scattered across the globe. Since launching the program, Vertiv has scaled its partner program massively. In mere months, the program has grown to 12,000 partners — several times what Vertiv had before. Without Impartner PRM, there is simply no way that Vertiv could have onboarded as many partners so quickly and efficiently, Coulthard says.

In addition to onboarding, Vertiv paid particularly close attention to things that mattered most to partners. Take deal registration, for example.

“The principal reason why a reseller goes to a manufacturer’s portal is to register a deal. With that clear understanding, we prioritized the deal registration journey in our portal design. Anyone logging into the portal can find a nice, clear and simple user interface with which they can use to get a deal registered quickly and efficiently,” says Coulthard.

With Impartner’s input, gleaned over hundreds of engagements with customers, Vertiv concluded that a simpler deal registration experience was better than an overly complex one. The 15, 20 and in some case 25 different data fields Vertiv once requested were significantly reduced to a relative meaningful few. Little wonder that milestones and objectives were quickly reached. Within a few months of becoming fully operational, the value of deals registered on Vertiv’s automation platform climbed to $500 million. Months later, the figure topped the $800 million threshold.

Today, Vertiv has a complete window into the most detailed operations of its entire channel operations. And for the first time, its partners have a single pane of glass with which they can access any Vertiv tool, support process or sales materials they need to help grow their relationship with Vertiv and better support their customers.

This, Coulthard says, is just the beginning.

For the remainder of 2021 and beyond, Vertiv has a number of developments planned or already underway. This includes embracing Impartner Through Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA), Impartner’s Google Ads tool and Impartner’s partner locator, too. The latter, Vertiv believes, “will be a game changer” that gives Vertiv a much better way of maintaining a database of 12,000 partner records. Very soon, partners themselves will be able to go into the partner portal to update their company profiles and view for themselves how they will be represented on vertiv.com.

Upon reflection, Coulthard says he couldn’t be more pleased at what he and his team have accomplished.

“We were a challenger in the channel, so we had to do something different in order to attract new partners from established competitors to our partner program,” he says. “We have achieved our expectations and are eager to put even more milestones behind us.”

For a demo of how Impartner can help you accelerate the performance of your channel, click here.

Tighten a screw. Open a can of paint. Pound a nail in a pinch. These are just some of the clever things you can do with a screwdriver, in addition to the obvious. Try as you might, however, you cannot use a screwdriver to inflate a tire.

What goes for your toolbox applies to your tech stack. Take your Salesforce CRM. It’s supremely helpful for tracking interactions, improving sales processes and otherwise bringing sense to the traditional chaos of sales and marketing. Same with Salesforce Communities, which you may use as a makeshift PRM. But neither are effective tools for helping you increase marketing in coordination with channel partners. To help ramp sales and marketing partners make on your behalf, you need a purpose-built tool known as Through Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA).

TCMA technology is not new but it’s not widespread. Blame bad design or poor implementations.

Until now.

Finally, one company has fixed both shortcomings. The company is Impartner, whose TCMA works with almost any PRM and provides customers an unrivaled tool for accelerating your indirect sales and elevating end-customer engagements.

The timing couldn’t be better. If 2020 taught industry anything, it’s that capable partners who can sell on your behalf, represent your brand faithfully and bring you new customers is priceless.

Which brings us to your company. Does your digital toolbox have a purpose-built tool for helping partners ramp up marketing on your behalf? Can they automatically launch and manage effective campaigns? Do you fully understand all the things that TCMA can do, or why it is specifically superior to other tools for igniting your channel marketing?

If not, then spend a few minutes with Impartner’s Robb Franks, director of sales engineering. In this new Lessons from the Edge (LFTE) video, Franks walks channel professionals through the foundation of TCMA, its unique capabilities and use cases for companies just like you.

“Partner-provided leads are the next best thing to referrals in terms of close rates,” says Franks. “But if you don’t have a proper TCMA tool, it’s very difficult for your partners to effectively and consistently provide those leads to you.”

Partner marketing has never been more important than now. Help your partners help you with TCMA. For more on what TCMA can do for your business, be sure to check out the Impartner TCMA Demand Generation Center.

Key insights when thinking about partner agreements and negotiations

By T.C. Doyle

When building a channel program, prepare yourself for an inevitable question from one or more partners: “Are you willing to sign an exclusive deal?”

The question often pops up when you enter a new market and/or when a partner senses a unique sales opportunity that revolves around your product or service. It’s a conversation you should prepare for as you build your partner program, says channel program expert and Tenego Academy president and founder Donagh Kiernan.

Kiernan, a member of the Impartner Channel Chiefs Advisory Board (CCAB), advises clients on how to build partner programs and enable their channel personnel. He advises having conversations about exclusive deals when you begin developing agreements and negotiations for partner contracts*.

Why is pretty straightforward: “Exclusive agreements protect vendors and their partners from either party working with competition for a set period of time,” explains Kiernan. “Exclusivity affords partners the freedom to develop a market without having to worry about a competing reseller, and vendors the assurance that they have a dedicated sales ally who can provide access to a market, build a sales pipeline and speed their time to success.”

Exclusive deals offer both promises and challenges. No matter where you are in your partner-building journey, you’re going to have to consider them at some point. In this article, we examine the pros and cons of exclusive deals, a little business history for perspective, and questions you will want to ask before you move forward with any decisions.

Before we dive in deeper, please note: exclusive agreements don’t have to last forever or be to all or nothing propositions. Also, exclusive arrangement should always be vetted by veteran legal experts as exclusive deals are subject to different if not confusing local and national laws, in many instances.

Understanding Exclusivity

Understanding exclusivity starts with definitions. You can, for example, define “exclusive” in any way you wish. In general, exclusive deals involve granting a partner sole access to a market as defined by geography, product specialty, company type, customer segment, vertical niche, use case or more. You can also make your “exclusive” more specific, such as a list of named accounts. Again, laws vary from region-to-region, but you get the idea.

When carving up a market, specificity is the key. “Exclusive” can be as simple as a registered deal in a PRM, or as broad as a vertical market such as “government” or geography such as “the UK.” Regardless of what you choose, you will want any definition of “exclusive” to pass the McKinsey & Co. “MECE test.” A territory, sector or niche, for example, should be “mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.”

The pros exclusivity? There are many. An exclusive deal can provide you a knowledgeable partner who is dedicated to the success of your products or services. It can also provide instant access to a desired set of customers, plus a local presence and trusted ally in a region or vertical market that you alone don’t have great familiarity with.

On the downside, there are as several cons that may or may not influence your decision making. When you grant a partner an exclusive deal, for example, your sales priorities become subject to the agenda of another company. That may or not work for your organization or strategy. Similarly, your exclusive deal may mean that your sales opportunities are limited to a partner’s existing customer base or tied to its sales savvy. If you sell sophisticated goods and/or services, you become defined by your exclusive partner’s technical acumen or dedication to customer service.

There are also other considerations. Ask yourself: are you willing to grant exclusivity to a partner that represents one of your rivals? How would you respond if a high-performing exclusive partner wants to expand into another market where you already have existing partners? Would you extend its exclusivity? If so, how?

Given the pros and the cons of exclusivity, it’s not surprising that business history includes examples of success and failures of exclusive deals. Apple, for example, signed a deal that made communications giant AT&T the sole carrier for the then-new Apple iPhone. (The deal worked spectacularly.) But a previous exclusive deal involving Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs failed miserably. That deal, struck in the late 1980s, gave computer reseller Businessland exclusive rights to sell the NeXT computer to educators and students. It was just one of several missteps that doomed the device and, ultimately, the company.

Questions to Consider

If asked for exclusivity, you need to consider several questions before deciding. They include:

1. Is the partner sufficiently staffed from both a sales and engineering perspective to handle the demand we expect in a given market?
2. Will this partner devote sufficient personnel to our product line?
3. Does our technology complement an existing practice of the partner, or will it help launch the partner into a new market adjacency?
4. What is the partner’s history in our field of expertise?
5. What is the partner’s existing customer base and what percent of our total addressable market (TAM) does this partner comprise?
6. Will this partner offer us exclusivity in return for our commitment?
7. What is our plan if target objectives or metrics are not met?
8. Can we easily exit a deal if it’s not working as hoped?

What to do when things go wrong is an especially important consideration. The problems you encounter with an exclusive deal could run the gamut from very firm (you partner gave business to a competitor) to more squishy (your partner took sides with an end-customer over a contract dispute). At any one time, the calculus of your deal could change when one or more of the following occurs:

• A disruptive innovation is introduced
• Another product or service makes better sense in a particular customer setting
• Another partner comes to fore and offers more promise and/or commitment
• Economic conditions change

If any of these developments occur, change is inevitable.

One last thing: don’t confuse fidelity with loyalty. You might be tempted to grant a partner exclusive rights to a market because of its pledge of fidelity to you. What might make better sense is to enlist the support of loyal partners that are equally capable and dedicated to customers’ success but may represent other brands.

For more thoughts on how best to build your partner program, but sure to check out our series on program building blocks, Channel 101*. In addition, see for yourself how partner automation can help increase your sales by a full third. Sign-up for your Impartner demo today.

Coming next in Part Seven: Partner Program Tiers and Supports Matrix

*The Channel 101 series was produced with insight and information provided by Tenego Academy. Tenego Academy is a Cork, Ireland-based company that provides support to companies wanting to grow their organizations with third-party “channel partners” be they dealers, agents, referral partners, distributors, consultants and more.

Tenego Academy’s 12-part “Build Your Partner Program Like a Global Leader” education program helps companies looking to create, grow and/or optimize a partner program regardless of their size or market focus. No matter where your company is in its channel partner program journey, you will benefit from Tenego Academy’s 12-part program, which covers everything from channel strategy to partner recruitment to automation and more.

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].

You rely on marketing automation for your own salespeople, so why leave your partners to fend for themselves when your brand is on the line?

More than three-quarters of marketers use some form of marketing automation technology today, according to Social Media Today. By the end of 2021, the number will be nearly 90% among enterprise organizations.

When it comes to investing in through channel partner automation (TCMA) — the kind that vendors use to enable channel partners to run effective marketing campaigns on their behalf — the numbers tell a very different story. Less than half of vendor organizations provide TCMA technology to partners, according to Forrester Research. While the number is growing, it’s not close to what it should be for organizations to fulfill their marketing ambitions, according to Forrester Research analyst Jay McBain.

For years, McBain has predicted that a “third-wave” of digital selling will take root in the corporate world, one that is propelled, in part, by business partners that historically haven’t played much of a role in vendor brand enhancement.

“Enabling partners of all types to leverage vendor content, messaging, branding, and demand generation initiatives in their local markets is critical to driving a winning customer experience,” McBain has written. “Those brands that can balance their direct and indirect execution while ensuring consistent customer expectations through distributed and localized marketing will have outsized success in the market.”

Despite its promise, however, a lack of widespread adoption of TCMA is holding back this promising wave of business transformation. This begs a question that you should consider if your investments into TCMA are underwhelming:

You don’t compete without marketing automation for your company, so why leave your partners to fend for themselves when your brand is on the line?

We at Impartner, which provides one of the world’s most advanced TCMA platforms, have heard all the excuses before. The three we hear most are:

• Our existing CRM and marketing automation platform (MAP) does just fine on its own
• TCMA is an under-utilized investment
• Channel partners aren’t really interested in marketing

Here’s why you’re kidding yourself if you believe these falsehoods.

Our existing CRM and marketing automation platform does just fine on its own

No doubt MAPs have revolutionized go-to-market strategies the world over. But MAPs aren’t designed to help you effectively market your products and services through partners. For that, you’ll need a TCMA, which is purpose built for the task.

Here are three reasons why your MAP is no substitute for TCMA:

• You cannot localize business partner campaigns with MAP technology
• You cannot customize through-channel initiatives with a MAP
• You cannot prioritize the timing of channel marketing activities with a MAP

Consider some specific things you cannot do in a MAP that you can easily do with a TCMA. With a robust TCMA solution, you can customize campaigns around products, services, price points, geographies, reseller authorizations and much more. You cannot do that with a MAP. Nor can you give partners the flexibility to run your campaigns on their time schedule with a MAP.

Also, you can easily attach a partner’s logo to your mailings and landing pages with a TCMA, but not in a MAP. You can also append a partner’s social media feed or its URL to its homepage with your TCMA, but not with your typical MAP.

We could go on — and on — but you get the picture. Like a screwdriver, you can do a lot with your existing MAP. But try as you might, you cannot use it to inflate a tire.

TCMA is an under-utilized investment

While accurate, this sentiment if also woefully incomplete. Impartner has done extensive research on the topic and identified why TCMA systems are chronically underutilized. Among other things, business partners complain that ease of use leaves them wanting and that key steps are not automated. To combat this, Impartner has launched a new TCMA platform offers partners a simple, four-step adoption process can be completed in minutes — literally. After enrolling, partners quickly realize that vendor campaigns will run automatically afterwards, resulting in a steady stream of leads that can flow indefinitely. What is more, all co-branding is automated. No additional partner input is required in order to participate in campaigns once a partner provides its logo and contact information.

Channel partners aren’t really interested in marketing; they focus on technology instead

While once true, this maxim is an outdated as a DVD player. Contrary to popular belief, marketing spending as percent of revenue has actually increased among partners as they have tried to promote their brands along with those of their vendors. Small companies, in particular, have hiked their spending. In fact, they spend a greater percent of revenue on marketing than their larger channel counterparts, on average.

But don’t just take our word. Consider CompTIA’s “State of the Channel” study. Researchers have probed historically probed thousands upon thousands of partners worldwide on their view of go-to-market strategies and more. In particular, researchers asked, “Which of the following facets of joint selling/marketing [with vendors] are most relevant to your firm and/or most likely to contribute value?”

At the top of list, naturally, are the usual suspects: more quality leads and better negotiating leverage. But also high on the list is something that underscores a growing desire among partners to step up their marketing with vendor allies: the opportunity to tap into digital the marketing expertise and social media know-how of vendor partners. Today, nearly one-third of partners today say these capabilities are highly relevant to their organizations. So, too, is the ability to “appear bigger and more sophisticated to the customer” thanks to new digital capabilities.

Which brings us back to you. You have a powerful sales engine today. But without a TCMA, there’s no way you can fire it on all cylinders. How do you expect to get your destination on time?

For insights on how you can use a TCMA to drive your indirect marketing, start by clicking here.

From resellers to consultants, you have plenty of options when it comes to partners

If you’re a fan of the Annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, you know that dogs come in all shapes and sizes.

The same is true for business partners, though even partners themselves would joke that some of the dogs are better groomed.

Looks notwithstanding, your channel partners can be your best friends in the market. They will steady your company in good times and bad, and provide your customers with satisfaction that you alone simply cannot provide at scale.

In part one of Honing Your Partner Proposition, we zeroed in on the basic components of building a channel. In this installment of the “Channel 101” series, we will focus on the different types of partners you will likely encounter, especially in the high tech, cybersecurity and fin-tech markets.

Once you identify and create the components of your basic partner program, you will want to consider creating specific requirements and rewards for different partner types. To do so, it helps to understand their businesses to a greater degree.*

Partners differentiate or categorize themselves in a variety of ways, including:

• Business model
• Technological capability
• Geography
• Services specialty
• Vertical market focus
• Customer segments

When you consider your total addressable market (TAM), you might be surprised to learn that there is a wide array of third-party organizations that may be suited to help you achieve your objectives. Here’s a sampling of different partner types, complete with an overview of what they do and why it makes sense for you to consider working with them.

Partner Types

Volume Resellers

High-volume partners are skilled in delivering innovation at scale. They often trade in multiple geographies and are very responsive to changing market dynamics buffeted by disruptive innovations, economic upheaval and changing customer buying habits.

For vendors, they offer existing relationships, sales competency, local influence if not presence and strong logistical capabilities.

On the downside, volume resellers are not always brand loyal or technically astute. Because they work in highly competitive environments, they often demand financial uplifts and marketing development funds.

Your best bet to connect with them: demonstrate your proactive sales and marketing prowess (so they don’t have to do that heavy lifting) and show them a way to achieve higher margins with the sale of your products and services.

VARs/Systems Integrators

For tech and other vendors, VARs and SIs are credible and influential sales and delivery partners.

They boast subject matter expertise (SME), vertical market knowledge and market reach. They are tight with mid-market customers and thrive in complex, multi-vendor environments.

What makes them difficult partners? It’s hard to secure their mind share. They have high employee turnover, long sales cycles and meager marketing resources if not capabilities. In many industries, they are experiencing significant financial upheaval as a result of digital transformation among their customers. They are looking for help transitioning to a new business model in many instances and are looking for organizations that can lead the way.

Your best appeal to these organizations, thus, is to showcase the additional service opportunities your innovation creates for them and your commitment to them regardless of what business model they latch onto.

Service Providers

Service providers thrive on repeatable business, long-term contracts and project-based fees.

Their strengths: longstanding ties to customers, and/or legal regulatory incumbency. Though they may be lumbering, they have scale and outsized influence in many markets. They also have honed businesses and can thrive in low-margin conditions.

Their weaknesses are they are challenged by stiff competitors including outsourcers. They are sometimes slow to react to disruptive innovation and have limited partnering experience in many instances.

What they want is upsell opportunities, new service offerings and scalable pricing.

In some instances, they also want to be treated as customers, not partners, which can muddle your contractual relationships with these companies.

The key to working with these organizations is understanding their business models and intersecting with their existing workstreams.

Sales Agents

In many industries, such as insurance, Real Estate and telecommunications, sales agents are ubiquitous. They are sales and transaction-oriented, and motivated by commissions and fees. More and more, they are very eager to embrace recurring revenue sales models that reward them over time.

Sales agents boast close ties to customers and an ability to close transactions. Because of their ubiquity, they often give vendors unrivaled geographical reach.

On the downside, they are often short-term focused and brand agnostic. In some fields, they are technical wizards while in others they are outmatched by specialty resellers.

Sales agents want clearly defined programs, leads and proven compensation models that pay out over time. And they expect and prefer that a vendor handle billing, support and more.

Consultants

Consultants are driven by business relationships and service projects. Historically, they have lived off billable hours and project-based fees though their business models are changing. Many now prefer service level agreements (SLAs) or contracts that reward them for improving business outcomes.

On the plus side, they have influence with decision makers and subject matter expertise. On the downside, they typically have their own agenda, do not make the bulk of their money on the sale of goods and services, and may prefer a level of independence you might find uncomfortable.

What they want most is anything that they can turn into a service opportunity. They also want referral revenue.

Managing these relationships requires significant effort. And your return on investment (ROI) can be difficult to quantify. But their access to key decision makers can be very appealing.

Distributors

Think of distributors as the middleman’s middleman. They are responsible for providing the products and services that vendors develop. Everything they do they do it at scale. They are known for the breadth and depth of their relationships.

Their strengths include existing reseller networks, support sophistication, proactive marketing and sales support.

Their weaknesses include challenging finances, outmoded business models and a lack of sales sophistication for more advanced ideas and innovations.

Your best option for winning them over is showing them sales momentum, complementary relationships and/or helping them launch into market adjacencies.

One thing to note: they require significant attention (think cash) to get their internal salespeople interested in your offerings. Once you sign up a distributor, in other words, your journey just beginning, not ending.

ISVs

In many industries, these are specialized developers of digital products and services sold commercially or embedded into other products.

ISVs are driven by the sale of their products and the retention of users. They are also keen on aligning with those who can pair up to create new combinations of value.

For third-party vendors, ISVs offer their own marketing and sales mechanisms, and additional lift for your products and services. On the downside, they can be slow to decide on anything and they get territorial if your “complementary” products and services compete with anything they offer now or plan to do so in the future.

What they seek is anything that can help make their own product more useful or “sticky” with a customer.

Trade Associations

Professional associations may not be the first partner type or organization that comes to your mind when thinking about partners, but they should be considered, nonetheless.

Trade and professional associations range in size from the American Medical Association (AMA) to the local Kiwanis Club. Organizations like these live to provide value to members and to raise awareness of their industry, market and/or cause.

They generate revenue from member dues, event attendance fees and more.

Why are they a possible partner? Well, consider their strengths. They are in regular contact with decision makers, provide invaluable insights and networking opportunities, and attract a consistent following.

Weaknesses? As a rule, they generally do not sell on behalf of vendors, and they often lack a formal mechanism for translating influence into action.

What motivates them? They want research, new members and sponsorships for ongoing activities.

Working with them takes some effort. But the returns can be enormous in terms of awareness and influence building.

Final Thoughts

Finally, it’s worth spending a moment on what Tenego Academy* calls model alignment.

After gaining traction with partners, you might learn that you could do more business through partners if you change or alter your deliverable in some fashion. The change could be in how you sell your technology, to whom and for how much.

You might learn, for example, that your ideas or innovations are too expensive compared to your competition. You might discover that there is insufficient add-on revenue opportunity associated with the sale of your product or service. You might also learn that third parties consider you difficult to work with.

All of this is perfectly natural and to be expected. Relax, in other words: you got this.

After thinking through your partner value proposition, make sure you don’t let that good work go to waste by under-investing in partner automation. It is worth repeating: The products and services you provide the market are only a portion of what partners evaluate when considering your value proposition. They also take into account your onboarding, marketing support, training and more — the kind made possible by world-class automation. For more insight, sign up for an Impartner demo today.

Coming next in Part Six: Partner Agreements and Negotiations

*The Channel 101 series was produced with insight and information provided by Tenego Academy. Tenego Academy is a Cork, Ireland-based company that provides support to companies wanting to grow their organizations with third-party “channel partners” be they dealers, agents, referral partners, distributors, consultants and more.

Tenego Academy’s 12-part “Build Your Partner Program Like a Global Leader” education program helps companies looking to create, grow and/or optimize a partner program regardless of their size or market focus. No matter where your company is in its channel partner program journey, you will benefit from Tenego Academy’s 12-part program, which covers everything from channel strategy to partner recruitment to automation and more.

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 fourth installment in the Channel 101 series offers insights on basic program components*

Question: Why would anyone want to partner with you?

If you think that’s impertinent, then chances are you haven’t thought through everything that is required to build a successful partner program. Whether you’re new to channels or struggling to make them work, you’re going to have to hone your partner value proposition. It’s nothing less than the raison d’etre of your entire program.

Put bluntly, you partner value proposition is the sum total of all the reasons why partners will want to align with your company. It includes the economics of partnership (as in how partners will make money with your company and what it will cost them to align with you), what kind of support you provide (both technical and marketing), how you stack up against the competition, how you fit with other vendors partners represent in the market and much, much more.

In this, our fourth installment of the “Channel 101” series, we zero in on the basic components of your partner value proposition. As a quick recap, we previously provided an overview of different partners, program requirements and more. Now it’s time to focus inwardly on the basic program components.

(Note: A complete partner value proposition includes more than an analysis of program components; in our next installment we will examine another aspect, different partner types and their needs.)

Your Partner Value Proposition: Basic Program Components

Let’s come back to the central question: why would anyone want to do business with your company? If you break it down, your answer will likely include a mix of the following elements:

• The innovativeness of your solution
• The economic opportunity your product or service provides
• Your distinct customer acquisition process
• The level and type of marketing and sales support you provide
• Your commitment to customer success

Below, we break each of these down a bit more. One thing to note: partners of different maturity demand and/or need different things from your organization. New companies that come into your world will likely need more technical and sales support whereas partners more versed in your products and services will likely want more marketing support and/or opportunities to build on top of your innovations.

The Innovativeness of Your Solution

Chances are your solution solves one or more end-customer challenges. It might enable them to generate new revenue or better serve their own customers. In all likelihood, you have developed a sound customer value proposition. You’ll need the same for partners. Why is fairly obvious.

Suppose your product solves a challenge that undermines a revenue stream that would-be partners rely on? Good luck trying to get them to partner with you. What you must do is concisely tease out what business problem or market opportunity your idea addresses for partners. You must also look at how your idea is “packaged.” Some ideas, for example, cannot be packaged in way that they can be sold or supported by a third party. If that’s true with you, then partner recruitment is going to be a challenge.

Once you have a defined understanding of what problem your idea addresses, then you’re halfway there. Now you must think in terms of more mature partners who will likely want more detailed information about niche use cases and/or vertical market applicability.

The Economic Opportunity Your Product or Service Provides

Sell a widget, make a buck. That’s the basic reward model for many ideas sold though partners today. But it’s only a fraction of the economic reason why a third party would align with you.

In addition to immediate financial rewards, partners are looking to align with companies that help them create new business practices and/or revenue streams. They are also looking for those that create opportunities for them to sell additional services.

What attracts potential partners most is the total economic value that surrounds your offerings. In the tech world, many software vendors invite third parties to join their partner programs because they can demonstrate that for every $1 worth of their technology sold, there are an additional $4-$9s worth of additional services generated for partners. That’s a compelling proposition.

While that economic opportunity doesn’t exist for every industry, you’ll benefit from doing the math on what economic opportunity your ideas generate.

One additional thought: As your partner program matures, your financial incentives and rewards will have to be better thought out. You’ll want to keep things simple but must figure out how to reward different activities and behaviors. You’ll also have to figure out how to reward different levels of contribution, which will likely stimulate you to consider adding tiers and other adjuncts to your program.

Your Distinct Customer Acquisition Process

In addition to knowing how your ideas solve buyer problems, partners want to understand how your organization targets customers. The steps you take to educate the market, to position your ideas and even whom you target are key considerations for potential partners.

Critically, it is important to understand how your buyer’s journey meshes with your go-to-market activities with partners. In days of old, third-party dealers, consultants and more played a significant role in helping steer customers to your brand. Now Google and other influencers play a role. Today, most of a buyer’s journey is nearly done before end customers ever connect with one of your partners. This has significant ramifications in terms of how you educate, motivate, support and reward partners.

When thinking about the distinct customer journeys you create, you must factor in where partners fit into the mix. What stage do partners naturally fall in? And are your policies and programs aligned accordingly to yield the maximum from their input and support?

When your program is more advanced you will likely need to consider additional tools and means for generating demand. At some stage, you might turn to partner events. At the very least, you will need to think in terms of community and ecosystem building.

The Level and Type of Marketing and Sales Support You Provide

Ever been excited to attend an event because of the guest list only to arrive and find the food is lousy? If so, chances are the experience was less than what you hoped for.

That’s not unlike what happens in the partner world when a vendor comes to fore with a creative innovation and a lot of brand awareness but will no support for partners. The net result is the same: dissatisfaction all around.

To be successful with partners, you must provide them with comprehensive marketing and technical support. Don’t skimp.

When it comes to sales, early-stage partners will need help with basic questions so budget appropriately (read: disproportionately) for pre-sales support. And pony up for post-sales support, too. Remember: partners don’t have access to your engineering department the way that your direct sales team does, so make sure they are supported adequately.

When it comes to marketing, make sure they have everything they need to faithfully position, price, configure and sell your idea. They will need Powerpoints, sales scripts and more.

One final thought: share liberally. Some companies prefer not to share competitive information with partners because they fear it will fall into the wrong hands. Bad idea. Give partners the same access to tools and information that you provide your internal sales teams.

After getting established, you will need to think in terms of PR, success stories and, most importantly, leads. (We will address lead generation in another installment but just note that it requires an investment in automation.)

Your Commitment to Customer Success

This bucket covers a lot so we will focus on one aspect that matters regardless of what product, service or idea you provide. This is how committed you are to your partners’ customers’ success. In far too many instances, this is an afterthought. But it shouldn’t be.

Prepare yourself to work cooperatively to measure end customer satisfaction, not as a way to identify under-performing partners, which is something you should absolutely do, but more as a method to ensure that the people or entities actually using your ideas are as satisfied as they could be. Doing so sets you up for continued success, be it subscription renewals, upsell and cross-sell opportunities or more.

If your ideas are complex, then you must commit to seeing delivery through partners to the very end. Not all organizations do this. Some expect partners to handle everything once they step into a buyer’s sales cycle. This is a mistake for several reasons. It cuts your company off from important feedback and insights that customers will share based on their experiences, and it abstracts actionable steps that you could take to make things better.

One final thought: Whatever you to do with regards to customer success, make sure you do it in coordination with your partners. Do not let the final step in a long process unravel everything because a policy or bad practice ruins an otherwise solid relationship.

What do we mean? Think warranty claims, returns and more. Oftentimes, unrealistic demands on the part of idea originators spoil an otherwise healthy relationship. Be fair to the bitter end: your partners will appreciate it.

Final Thoughts

After thinking through basic program components, it’s worth spending a moment on what Tenego Academy* calls model alignment.

After gaining traction in your market, you might learn that you could do more business through partners if you change your approach in some fashion. The change could be how you sell your technology, to whom and for how much.

You might learn, for example, that your ideas or innovations are too expensive compared to your competition. You might discover that there is insufficient add-on revenue opportunity associated with the sale of your product or service. You might also learn that third parties consider you difficult to work with.

All of this is perfectly natural and to be expected. Relax, in other words: you got this.

After thinking through basic components, make sure you don’t let that good work go to waste by under-investing in partner automation. It is worth repeating: The products and services you provide the market are only a portion of what partners evaluate when considering your value proposition. They also take into account your onboarding, marketing support, training and more — the kind made possible by world-class automation. For more insight, sign up for an Impartner demo today.

Coming next in Part Five: How to Hone a Value Proposition That Appeals to Different Partner Types

*The Channel 101 series was produced with insight and information provided by Tenego Academy. Tenego Academy is a Cork, Ireland-based company that provides support to companies wanting to grow their organizations with third-party “channel partners” be they dealers, agents, referral partners, distributors, consultants and more.

Tenego Academy’s 12-part “Build Your Partner Program Like a Global Leader” education program helps companies looking to create, grow and/or optimize a partner program regardless of their size or market focus. No matter where your company is in its channel partner program journey, you will benefit from Tenego Academy’s 12-part program, which covers everything from channel strategy to partner recruitment to automation and more.

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].

Irish company and Impartner are working to produce a new series designed to help business practitioners, Channel 101

By T.C. Doyle

Question: Is channel management an art or a science?

Donagh Kiernan, founder and CEO of Tenego Academy, knows the answer: “Best practices exist because every business is the same,” says Kiernan. “But expertise [also] exists because every business is different.”

Translation: Channel management, planning and sales is a mix of both art and science— but you better get the answers to the “science” questions right.

Which brings us to a new series recently launched at Impartner, “Channel 101.”

Channel 101 is a new editorial project that covers the basics of channel planning, program creation, partner recruitment and more. Working with Tenego Academy, an Irish company that works with channel practitioners to help them design, build and then manage world-class channel programs, Impartner has created a series of blogs that provide companies of any size or maturity with answers to key questions.

In this new “Lessons from the Edge” video, Kiernan offers advice and support on how to develop practical skills in sales channel development and management for software companies.

The key basics of any partner program, according to Tenego, is partner proposition, fit and enablement. Put another way, it boils down to this:

• Do you have a compelling proposition that will attract partners?
• Are you able to identify and then cultivate ties with partners that are capable of helping you achieve your objectives?
• Can you enable partners once you have attracted them?

Partner fit is a particularly difficult challenge for many companies. “Vendors spend too much effort on relationships with the wrong people,” Kiernan says. The reason? Vendors keep trying to get all of the capabilities they need in a marketplace from a select set of partners. In doing so, vendors overlook the fact that expertise is typically spread out over an entire ecosystem. Vendors, thus, need more partners than they realize, and generally a mix of partner types to satisfy their ambitions.

Another thing Kiernan discusses in this video: honing your partner value proposition. It’s vitally important to attract the right type and number of partners.

“Revenue sharing is not the main thing that attracts partners,” Kiernan says, “value proposition is.”

He presses vendors to ask themselves the following: “What’s the motivation for a partner to work every day to sell our products?” If your company doesn’t have a well-defined answer, you are destined to struggle in the channel until you do.

When thinking about your partner proposition, consider your business model, technological innovation and the way in which your product or service helps partners achieve their goals.

Finally, take note of the last question I ask Kiernan: “Which is the area in which vendors stumble most?” His answer: enablement.

If you’re building a program for the first time and are not sure what world-class enablement is, then be sure to get an understanding of what automation can do for you. Among other things it can turn your art into a science when it comes to onboarding, recruitment, through-channel marketing, tiering, program administration and more. Be sure to sign up for 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].

The third installment in the Channel 101 series provides answers to get you moving

By T.C. Doyle

Congratulations on your decision to grow your business with partners. Choosing a leveraged sales model will almost certainly give your business some additional strength. But it requires significant effort to make the most of the leverage that partners can provide.

In the first two installments of the “Channel 101” series, we introduced the concepts of basic channel building in the tech industry. This includes the types of programs you can build, and the best ways to leverage current partners that may have come into your world. Now it’s time to get more serious and start thinking about the ideal partners for you.

In this installment, we examine ways to help you better understand the types of business partners that exist today, the ones that are best suited to your business, and the best ways to attract their interest.

“Determining the right type of partners that make the most sense for your business is a core step in building the ideal partner program,” says Donagh Kiernan, founder and CEO of Tenego Academy, a training and channel team support company that helps tech vendors build effective channel programs.

Understanding Company Types Before You Begin Your Evaluation

If you have a product or service to sell, you’re probably thinking first and foremost about recruiting reselling partners who can introduce you to new business. Building a successful partner program, however, requires more than signing up as many of these types of partners as possible. A better plan is to think in terms of your partner community as an ecosystem that thrives in the right conditions and survives in the most challenging ones.

Where to start? Begin by thinking in terms of the roles that you need third-parties to help with as you go to market. This includes:

• Lead generation
• Qualification
• Sales and deal closing
• Delivery
• Support

While many partners provide all of these capabilities, very few are good in all areas. Rather than exhaust significant energy trying to cultivate ties to the ones in your market that excel in each area, you are better off recruiting partners that are best in class in one area or more. This way, you can ensure that you are covering all your end customers’ needs in given market.

There are many pluses to this approach. But it does require that you take the time to identify the company types that participate in your market, and the specific skills your product requires. There may be more that you think, including all the company types from your target customers’ point-of-view:

• Sales partners (resellers, agents, etc.)
• Influencers (researchers, media and market consultants)
• Service providers (training, outsourced services etc.)
• IT Service providers (systems integrators, managed service providers, etc.)
• Advisory firms (specialist consultants, accounting firms, business consultants, etc.)
• Software solution providers (you, your competitors and all the solution areas most relevant to your space and technology platform providers)

Even if you do not choose to work with all of these company types directly, you should at least understand the role and significance they play in your chosen field. Some, for example, generate their own sales leads, while others prefer not to get entangled in the implementation of services, just the closing of transactions. Other partner types are just the opposite.

Key to understanding how each partner works is how value flows in your ecosystem. If you understand how each partner makes money, then it becomes much easier to determine if they might be a fit for your business.

Another consideration: nomenclature. Not every vendor — or partner for that matter — agrees on basic terms and monikers for various partner companies. An integrator in one part of the world or tech market, for example, can be a system house or service provider in another part. For a better understanding, learn what each partner does. This is a better indicator of who they are and what they might be able to do for you.

Also: within each partner category, there may be more than one partner type. In the broad area of “sales partners,” for example, there are referral partners, resellers, affiliates, agents and distributors. This sounds more complicated than it is. Keep an eye on what partners do and how they make their money and you’ll better understand the market dynamics that will likely take shape within your ecosystem.

Selecting Company Types for Evaluation

Once you’ve taken the time to understand your options, then it’s time to make some partner selections. There a dizzying number of ways to go about this. But the best efforts are based in some basic data. Remember: partnering can be personal, but it shouldn’t be emotional. Data and facts will point you toward partners that are best positioned to help you achieve your objectives, not sentiment and gut feelings.

To that end, build a scoresheet for each partner type and match it against your objectives. Your scoresheet should start with a high-level list of criteria for completing a sale — everything from lead generation to implementation to valued-added post-sale services. It should also include a section for scoring additional capabilities that you might need including specialized knowledge and focus, customer influence, ease of doing business, time-to-engagement and deal velocity.

After you have completed with this exercise, you should arrive at the point where you determine who or what fits you “target partner profile.” Having one or more target partner profile galvanizes your sales team, your channel managers and more. It helps everyone connected to partnering within your company understand your mission and objectives. It just makes life easier, Kiernan says.

One tip: don’t create overly short target partner profiles. If your product or service complements Microsoft’s Dynamics software platform, then do not assume that all existing Microsoft Dynamics partners are ideal for your company. There are 10,000 of them, after all! Evaluating whether each one is suited to your company could take months if not years.

A better approach? Develop a target partner profile with specifics based on your sales objectives and technological needs. This way you will quickly be able to exclude those that do not align with your target customer segment, market specialty or even business model.

Armed with more information about which types of partners to choose, it’s now time to focus on one more internal task. This is honing you partner value proposition. While it might feel more intuitive to devise this before your consider any other aspect of building your partner program, experience has shown you cannot do it in a vacuum. Going through the exercise above, as well as the others examined in the Channel 101 series, sets your company up for better success.

Lastly, don’t forget to start thinking about automation. The products and services you provide the market are only a portion of what partners evaluate when considering your value proposition. They also take into account your onboarding, marketing support, training and more. World class experiences demand world-class automation, the kind that Impartner provides. For more insight, sign up for an Impartner demo today.

Coming next in Part Four: Honing Your Partner Proposition

*The Channel 101 series was produced with insight and information provided by Tenego Academy. Tenego Academy is a Cork, Ireland-based company that provides support to companies wanting to grow their organizations with third-party “channel partners” be they dealers, agents, referral partners, distributors, consultants and more.

Tenego Academy’s 12-part “Build Your Partner Program Like a Global Leader” education program helps companies looking to create, grow and/or optimize a partner program regardless of their size or market focus. No matter where your company is in its channel partner program journey, you will benefit from Tenego Academy’s 12-part program, which covers everything from channel strategy to partner recruitment to automation and more.

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 second installment in the Channel 101 series provides answers to get you moving

How do you work with partners?

It sounds like a simple question but it isn’t. Successful partnering today demands exacting answers. This is especially true of partner enablement, management and prioritization.

Here are some questions and answers that will help you get up to speed and rack up wins quickly to help build momentum.

Partner Enablement Basics

What kind of onboarding do you provide partners? Does your organization, for example, insist on training for everything right away?

If you’re new to partnering, prep for this question early in your “partner program-building journey.” Here’s why.

Traditionally, vendors, especially tech vendors, demanded that channel partners complete exhaustive training before representing their products and/or services to customers. But this “bootcamp” training is falling out of favor as vendors embrace new thinking that is based on recent research and more evolved tech solutions.

Studies show that learners absorb more when they have an opportunity to apply early learnings and then get feedback on their initial efforts. Hands-on or active learning, thus, is becoming more common in business, including tech channels.

To get started with new partners, think in terms of basic tech training, solutions selling and customer experiences. You need to show new partners how to evaluate whether their existing customers are good fits for your products or services, for example. Partners will also need to know the basics of how to position your innovations, qualify leads, present and demos products, provide competitive bids and, finally, close new business.

Afterwards, it is time for partners to put these lessons to the test by engaging with customers in real-world settings. This is the time for you to monitor, support and assess early results. If engagements go smoothly, then partners are likely ready for additional “layers” of training and support that exposes them to more sophisticated sales techniques, marketing concepts and technological concepts. If not, you will need to reassess where your programs, training or products are coming up short.

Remember: the fault could lie with you, your partners or both. If multiple partners are stumbling for the same reason, for example, the problem likely lies within your own four walls. Don’t ignore informative results, in other words — even if the truth hurts.

Partner Management Basics

Once I get partners selling on my behalf, how can I manage them?

Once you get partners moving, it’s then time to guide them where you want them to go. Managing their journey with your company requires some foresight — not to mention automation (more on that below). For example, you will need to map out the following for your partners:

• Coverage models (think geographies, vertical markets, segments and more)
• Goals and metrics
• Commitments and obligations
• Activity targets
• Rewards

For larger or more sophisticated partners, you will want to develop partner business plans that are developed jointly and managed regularly. In addition to basic enablement, vendors and service providers must take pains to not overlook the tactical things that help make engagements successful. This includes developing marketing materials including:

• Product guides
• email content
• Blog articles
• Videos
• Case studies, white papers
• Downloads, tools and calculators
• Social media plans, events and more

Then, there are sales materials that cover everything from slide decks to sales pitches, call scripts, objection handling tips and even references.

One thing that has become increasingly important in software markets is modern contracts. These must be thoroughly conceived and road-tested to ensure fairness, repeatability and scalability.

Before unleashing these items on your entire partner ecosystem, road test them with a select few organizations. Think of this period as your “pre-mortem” during which you can identify roadblocks. If you treat this step seriously, you will eliminate a number of issues that could frustrate partners in the future. This includes helping partners understand your technology’s shortcomings or competitive weaknesses.

In most instances, you should address your shortcomings with select partners so they are prepared to best represent you in the market. Companies struggle with this decision, but experience has shown that partners appreciate candor. When treated professionally, partners respond in kind and work collaboratively with a vendor to overcome issues.

Prioritizing Partners

How should I prioritize partners?

Most companies invest in partners based on hope and intuition. But there are better ways to assess potential. This includes the level of enthusiasm a partner demonstrates as measured by the number of people they send to your training, the level of activity they have with your brand and the number of accounts they introduce to your organization. Other factors to consider include their skill level, competitive position in the market and ability to complement what your organization does to promote itself. This is especially true when it comes to generating leads on your behalf.

When assessing a partner, consider: Do your marketing activities mesh with their own? Do they conflict or, worse, compete? Finally, consider your partners’ soft skills and even their ethics. Do they offer award-winning service? Do employees like working there? And do customers rate their services highly?

These things and more must be considered.

You should also take note of the competitive products partners represent in the market and whether individual partners have the wherewithal and commitment required to represent more than one brand in each category.

Finally, you should identify bottlenecks that individual partners might have when it comes to building a practice around your technology. Some partners, after all, excel at sales but are weak at implementation. Most have just the opposite problem. By taking the time to understand the strengths and weaknesses of as many partners as possible, you can better assess which ones you will be successful with.

Even in the best of circumstances, however, expect problems to arise. Partners may present your products or services poorly. They may seem too busy with other vendors. And they may fumble with leads provided to them by your team.

These and other problems could be symptomatic of a broader problem: you are simply not a priority to some partners. That you will have to address when developing your partner value proposition, which we will cover in an upcoming Channel 101 article.

Consider the above steps for now. And don’t forget to start thinking about automation (we said we’d come back to it). The products and services you provide to partners are only a portion of what they expect from you. They also expect work class experiences when it comes to onboarding, marketing support, training and more. World class experiences demand world-class automation. For more insight, sign up for an Impartner demo today.

Coming next in Part Three: Partnering Strategy and Partner-Type Selection.

*The Channel 101 series was produced with insight and information provided by Tenego Academy. Tenego Academy is a Cork, Ireland-based company that provides support to companies wanting to grow their organizations with third-party “channel partners” be they dealers, agents, referral partners, distributors, consultants and more.

Tenego Academy’s 12-part “Build Your Partner Program Like a Global Leader” education program helps companies looking to create, grow and/or optimize a partner program regardless of their size or market focus. No matter where your company is in its channel partner program journey, you will benefit from Tenego Academy’s 12-part program, which covers everything from channel strategy to partner recruitment to automation and more.

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].

Channel chiefs and thought leaders debate wisdom of radical thinking in latest Channel Growth Hack

By T.C. Doyle

You can never have too many partners, right?

Well hold on: Technology industry channel chief and thought leaders debunk the idea in the latest Channel Growth Hacking, a bi-monthly discussion hosted by hosted by Kerry Desberg, CMO of Impartner, and Michelle Ragusa-McBain, vice president of global channel and digital strategy with JS Group. Channel Growth Hacking takes place on the second and fourth Thursday every month on Clubhouse, the drop-in social media platform.

“My growth hack idea? Fire [underperforming] partners faster,” says Steve Stewart, the head of channels at Smartsheet.

After years of managing high-tech channels, Stewart is convinced that too many partners weigh a company down, not give it lift. Instead of measuring success by the number of partners you recruit, why not prioritize partner sales output?

“A lot of us in channels management accept the 80-20 rule that says 80% of your sales will be achieved by 20% of your best partners. But most channel leaders fail to do anything about it,” he says.

A better way? Reduce your costs and administrative overhead by eliminating partners that do not perform. You will save money for doing so, and win back time to spend with more promising and higher-performing partners.

This has never been more important than now, Stewart adds, due to the pandemic, which has left some channel companies in shambles. Try as it might, Smartsheet cannot transform a struggling partner company alone with its technology or programs. That’s not to say it doesn’t try. It works with underperforming companies for two solid quarters, providing extra guidance and handholding along the way. If partners don’t generate sales after the extra help, Smartsheet trims them from its ranks.

It might sound controversial or harsh, but the idea is embraced by others, including another recent Chanel Growth Hack speaker, Steven Kellam, senior vice president of marketing and with 360insights.com. 360insights.com is a channel incentives and program strategy and execution company that works with a variety of vendor companies. Like Stewart, Kellam believes vendors waste money on partner companies that do not have the wherewithal to make the most of the investments vendors make into them. This is especially true of marketing investments including MDF.

“You really have to figure out what partners capabilities are,” says Kellam. Those that are struggling as a result of the pandemic stumbled in many instances because they could not market themselves appropriately at a time when demand for partner services was on the rise.

“Vendors give too much marketing support to those who cannot use it,” Kellam adds. “They’d be better off investing that money elsewhere.”

In some instances, that money could be better spent looking inward and addressing internal shortcomings, says Sean Phillips, director of partnerships and alliances for GreyCastle Security. While Phillips generally agrees that vendors invest too much in underperforming partners, he’s a big believer that vendors could get better traction with partners if they made themselves easier to work with.

This is what GreyCastle did when it reformed its own partner program. GreyCastle, for example, trimmed the number of categories that it divided partners into from eight to three after analysis. The company recognized that it was making its life and the lives of its partners overly complicated by counting so many different partner types and allowing for variances in standard contracts. Now it divides partners into three types: influencers, paid referrals and alliances. Doing so saves the company money and rewards it with more time and energy to engage with partners in the field.

“If I have any growth hack for fellow channel leaders it is this: wage a war on complexity within your own organization. You and your partners will be better for it.”

Neil Darling, president of RingLeader, a VoIP company, agrees. Darling’s company believes in the importance of taking time to properly align products with a focus toward frictionless demand generation to benefit both partners and their customers.

“If providers generate market demand, then channel partners will fulfill demand — and not the other way around,”  says Darling.

Finally, Donagh Kiernan, CEO of Tenego Academy of Cork, Ireland, weighs in on culling excess partners from programs. While not opposed to the provocative idea, Kiernan agrees vendors must look inward to determine if they might be the reason why partners underperform.

His company, which provides guidance to vendors and helps support their efforts to share partnering best practices, advises clients to hone their value proposition. Many, he notes, have done so with exquisite detail when it comes to customers. But some fumble with the basics when it comes to the channel. Many vendors, Kiernan notes, don’t take the time to understand how partners will make money with their products or services, or why they would embrace the company over a competitor. (For more on Kiernan’s thoughts on this topic, don’t miss Impartner’s new Channel 101 blog series for early stage practitioners.)

Manage your channel ranks as efficiently as possible, Kiernan agrees, but take an honest assessment of your own business. If your value proposition is wanting, your processes lacking or your automation full of friction, then take steps to fix what’s wrong with you.

Be sure to join us next time on Channel Growth Hacking. If you’re wondering how you can take complexity out of your channel partner program, sign up for an Impartner demo a 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].

From spreadsheets to platform automation, there is a better way to handle data

By T.C. Doyle

We can put a drone on Mars but we cannot automate data sharing to help grow our businesses?

For many tech vendors, this is sadly true. If you’re still passing customer information in spreadsheets shared via email, you’re woefully behind the curve, says Cassandra Gholston, co-founder and CEO at Partnertap.

A veteran of the enterprise software industry and member of the Impartner Channel Chief Advisory Board (CCAB), Gholston looks forward to the day when every vendor adopts channel management automation technology. But even those that leverage Partner Relationship Management (PRM) technology have questions when it comes to responsible and effective data sharing. Partnertap, a Seattle-area tech consultancy that specializes is helping software companies better coordinate sales activities with partners, knows why.

Vendors struggle to implement best practices because they don’t understand the full scope of data they collect from customers, partners and more, Gholston explains in a new “Lessons from the Edge” video. But best practices are exactly what they need. This is more true than ever given increased scrutiny around regulatory concerns including GDPR, and the increased interest in doing business through partners as a result of the global pandemic.

Data management has never been more important, Gholston says, but it remains an underdeveloped skill at many companies. One reason: many channel professionals are unsure how to conceptualize working with their data.

“When I think about data sharing, I think about it in three buckets,” says Gholston. These include pre-pipeline data, pipeline data and closed or won business data.

If you can identify who needs what data, when, for how long and for what purpose, you can put it to use more effectively and responsibly, Gholston says. Miss any one of those important steps and you could end up with disgruntled customers, partners or both.

Another tip: develop a realistic expectation of what partners will share with your company and when.

“If you build your program around certain expectations about partners and their data sharing, you will be sorely disappointed until you build a level of trust with individual partners,” says Gholston. Close partners will share information and insights willingly because they have trust in your organization. But newcomers with no track record with your team, technology or processes? Good luck with that, she adds.

For more on data sharing and channels management, don’t miss this latest, “Lessons from the Edge” video Q&A with Gholston, which can be found here.

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

“Grow” may be a goal but it is no strategy.

Differentiating between the two is just one of the many things you need to understand as you begin to build your channel. In addition, you will need to learn the basics of compelling partner propositions, channel economics and partner program building blocks. Before you get to these, however, it helps to look inward at your existing organization, specifically to your company’s culture. Believe it or not, culture will play a significant role in determining whether your organization can succeed with partners. Here’s why.

Know Thyself

If your culture is hyper-competitive, controlling and/or embraces a winner-take-all ideal, for example, then it is unlikely that you will win many fans in the channel. You will need to share the fruits of your efforts more when you rely on partners, after all. You will also have to share your best insights and your expertise to those whom you barely know.

As unsettling as that may be, it’s true just the same. Likewise, you cannot expect to thrive in the channel if your company is punitive or uncollaborative. Channel partners often represent several brands and may recommend one of your rivals over your products or services in certain situations. If you retaliate unfairly, you’ll likely develop a reputation for being hostile.

Similarly, if you’re overly rigid or difficult to work with, some partners will call you out for it quickly. Others will simply walk away. If customers today find your company difficult to engage, don’t expect partners to find it an easier unless you adjust.

When you begin on your channel journey, it helps to do so with a proper attitude and commitment.

Hone Your Partner Proposition

The No. 1 reason channel companies will work with you is the quality of your partner proposition. If the quality of your proposition is high, partners will take your certification courses, represent your brand faithfully and treat leads with great respect. They will also share information, competitive insights and profits willingly.

If your proposition is weak, partners won’t respond. If you cannot fathom why they would sacrifice time and energy to do business with you, in other words, don’t expect them to do so.

To better understand how compelling your partner proposition is, consider your current sales process. It typically starts with your product or service, then passes through several stages including lead generation, opportunity, sales, delivery, client success and, finally, after-sale services.

As you build your partner program, you need to understand where partners can help reduce your bottlenecks in your go-to-market strategy. Performing this exercise will help you craft a differentiated partner value proposition. It will also help you understand the different types and numbers of partners you need.

Finally, persuade your executive management team to ask itself one difficult question: does it view partnering as a cost or an investment? The answer will help you, a channel practitioner, better understand your organization’s commitment, expectation and understanding of doing business with partners.

Understanding Partner Economics

If you sell directly, chances are you understand your business economics. You know, for example, your costs when it comes to generating and qualifying leads, making presentations and demonstrations, and crafting evaluations and proposals. You know key metrics as well, including the number of leads you need to close a new customer.

But for partners? The math can get fuzzy. Understanding partnering economics, thus, is vitally important.

In a direct model, of course, a vendor or innovator incurs upfront sales costs (personnel, automation, campaigns, etc.) and risk. As a result, every new piece of business takes money from a vendor’s bottom line.

With partners, who already enjoy ongoing relationships with customers, a portion of sales costs are reduced. This is because partners leverage existing relationships and other sunk investments such as sales training, marketing know-how and more.

That said, partnering comes with its own set of costs. This includes the cost to train, manage and recruit partners. Then there’s the cost of commissions and other forms of rewards.

In general, doing business through partners can be more cost effective. But as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

Creating Your Partner Roadmap

Start by listing your priorities, be they growth, market expansion, customer satisfaction or even company valuation. Next, map your total addressable market (TAM) to the number and type of partners you believe you need to achieve your objectives. After, assess your readiness, including the strength of your partner proposition and your competitive positing. Finally, take a look at your messaging: would it appeal to you if you were a partner, or would it miss the mark?

Taking these steps will help you determine if you have the right type of partners, whether you need more and whether your expectations are in line with reality.

Finally, start thinking about the automation your company will need to manage, enable and reward your partners. Capable programs do not run on spreadsheets in 2021.

Additional Steps

In the blogs that follow, you will learn more channel basics, including assessing partner readiness, developing effective policies and processes, and addressing specific challenges that arise in early stage program development.

Up next in Blog Two: Supporting Current Partners.

*The Channel 101 series was produced with insight and information provided by Tenego Academy. Tenego Academy is a Cork, Ireland-based company that provides support to companies wanting to grow their organizations with third-party “channel partners” be they dealers, agents, referral partners, distributors, consultants and more.

Tenego Academy’s 12-part “Build Your Partner Program Like a Global Leader” education program helps companies looking to create, grow and/or optimize a partner program regardless of their size or market focus. No matter where your company is in its channel partner program journey, you will benefit from Tenego Academy’s 12-part program, which covers everything from channel strategy to partner recruitment to automation and more.

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].

Channel impresario Rod Baptie shares observations in new video

By T.C. Doyle

Changes that were working their way through the information and communications tech channel have accelerated as a result of Covid-19, new business models and powerful automation platforms.

So says Rod Baptie, founder and managing director of Baptie & Co., one of the tech industry’s most influential events and networking businesses. Baptie & Co., which consistently attracts top industry channel executives and influencers to is in-person and on-line gatherings, recently wrapped its company’s largest annual event, Channel Focus. As usual, the event showcased key thought leaders who analyzed and debated key industry trends including marketplaces, program tiering and more.

In this Impartner “Lessons from the Edge” video, Baptie, who is a member of the Impartner Channel Chiefs Advisory Board (CCAB), discusses three trends rippling through the high-tech channel in 2021, including:

• Building momentum for software services and recurring revenue-based business models
• Progressive partner programs that rethink some of the basic tenants of partners that have been around for decades
• Advanced partner management automation technology

Here’s a snapshot of Baptie’s thinking on each. For more, be sure to check out the “Lesson’s from the Edge” video featuring Baptie.

The Rise of Recurring Revenue Business Models

For years, channel advocates and thought leaders including Craig Schlagbaum, vice president of indirect business at Comcast Business, have tried to persuade more tech industry partners including value added resellers (VARs), systems integrators and other influencers to embrace business models built around recurring revenue, much like their agent counterparts who sell telecommunications services. It’s been a tough sell — until recently.

Like other thought leaders, Schlagbaum and Baptie see more partners embracing sales of subscription-based services. In many cases, customers are forcing their hands with select purchases of software sold as-a-service. This is having a significant ripple throughout the channel. In February 2022, for example, Exclusive Networks, a fast-growing tech products distributor based in Europe, reported that subscription sales are growing five times faster than traditional sales.

“The rapidly changing business model of both the vendor community and partner community, at the moment, is the biggest transition [in the technology channel],” says Baptie.

Progressive Partner Programs That Address New Business Realities

As part of the push by Riverbed, Nutanix, Datto and others to make their products more virtualized and thus available to be consumed as a monthly service, vendors are also making significant changes to their partner programs. The changes take into account the different rewards, incentives and behaviors that vendors must create in order to satisfy customers and partners alike.

“A key goal in a recurring revenue model is renewal. And that renewal will only happen if consumption is happening and there is satisfaction at the client level. So you are seeing a shift in terms of what partners are focused on,” says Baptie.

Vendors are doing the same thing. “All this means that things like behavior modeling with partners is changing,” says Baptie. “You’re moving from transaction-based incentives to behavior-based incentives.”

These changes put enormous pressure on vendors to rethink everything from onboarding, training and certification, rewards, market development funds (MDF) and more. The only way vendors can manage this complexity today is with better data, tools and processes — automation, in other words.

Advanced Automation Technology

Given the changes of late — think Covid, cloud technology and line-of-business buying — partners face new challenges and opportunities. With few customers to see in person, they have new interest in remote selling, which is fueling their interest in digital marketing such as TMCA, among other things.

All of these trends have put a premium on partner automation technology.

“If you’re in a substantial organization today and you cannot automate most of the processes and you’re still running around with Excel spreadsheets, you have a problem,” says Baptie. “Automation is the key but you’ve got to partner that with providing a really valuable experience for your partners.

In addition to these trends, this “Lessons from the Edge” video also sees Baptie share his thoughts on new vertical market specialties, channel economics and channel chief careers. If you work in or around channels and/or partner, you’ll definitely want to check it out.

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].

To communicate through partners, you simply need purpose-built tools

By T.C. Doyle

You can do a multitude of things with a sturdy screwdriver, but you cannot use it to inflate a tire.

Similarly, you can do many things with your Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) — generate leads, coordinate campaigns and measure marketing efficacy, among other things — but you cannot use it to effectively market your products and services through partners. For that, you’ll need another, purpose-built tool: Through Chanel Marketing Automation (TCMA).

Here are three reasons why your MAP is no substitute for TCMA. Actually, let’s make it four reasons (see below), starting with these three:

• You cannot localize business partner campaigns with MAP technology
• You cannot customize through-channel initiatives with a MAP
• You cannot prioritize the timing of channel marketing activities with a MAP

Here’s a closer examination of why not, followed by a bonus, fourth reason why you cannot expect your MAP to do the job of TCMA.

Localization

Suppose you create a compelling marketing campaign geared to a specific end-user audience. You’ve done your homework and know your audience’s needs and interests, spending budgets and even their buying journeys.

Thanks to this, you can create a campaign that includes links to web sites they might enjoy, a social media conversation that will help them complete their journey and branding iconography that reinforces their attraction to your brand.

Now try and do the same with a partner in the middle of your campaign. Can you easily attach a partner’s logo to your mailings and landing pages? How about a partner’s social media feed or the URL to its homepage?

Chances are these and other things will be a struggle. And that’s just for one partner.

Now imagine trying to do this for dozens, hundreds if not thousands of partners. Consider the number of images, hyperlinks and contact fields you will need to coordinate. Mix these up and every partner you work with will raise a stink while every customer you hope to attract will be left scratching their heads.

The reason for the issues outlined above have to do with the design and limitations of MAP tools. Simply put, they are not designed to help you automatically localize marketing campaigns through partners. But TCMA technology is.

TCMA can effectively perform “a mail merge” of digital assets for campaigns that include partner assets and digital information.

Customization

If your organization offers goods and services in different sizes, configurations, product categories and geographies, then there’s little chance that you can fully automate marketing campaigns and other activities with your partners using a MAP. This is especially true if your company has tiers of reseller partners with different levels of access or interest to your catalogue. Here’s why.

Imagine you’re a maker of healthcare products ranging from very sophisticated surgical-quality hip replacements to basic commodities such as personal protective equipment (PPE). Chances are that not all of your partners are authorized or inclined to sell your complete catalogue. If you launch a campaign that sends end customers to partner home pages, your partners are going to want their customers to see only the products from your company that they actively sell. Partners do not want to overwhelm potential customers with your complete catalogue, in other words. And whatever you offer for partners to show to customers on their websites, they are going to expect it to be in their preferred language.

While this might sound simple, it isn’t if you’re trying to use a tool that wasn’t designed to allow for individual partner customization. With a robust TCMA solution, you can customize campaigns around products, services, price points, geographies, reseller authorizations and much more.

By doing so, you will make both you and your partner more relevant to end customers.

Prioritization

Timing is everything in business, so the old adage goes. With marketing, the maxim is often true. Again, take partners.

As a vendor or services provider, you take great pride in the efforts you put forth on behalf of partners. This includes the quality of materials you provide them, the level of sophistication in the messages you craft and even the exactitude of the offers you create. But sometimes your timing may be out of synch with a partner you hope to help.

Some of your partners may be new to your company, for example, and not ready to introduce their customers to your goods and services. Other partners may be concerned that some of your efforts dilute or overwhelm marketing efforts of their own. And still more may be dismayed that your campaign conflicts with that of another supplier or provider they represent to the market.

To partners with these concerns, timing is everything. But they are out of luck if your marketing tools lack effective prioritization capabilities that help partners and vendors alike get the timing of their marketing activities aligned and in-synch.

TCMA technology can help you automate and coordinate this for partners with ease. But MAP tools? In most cases they struggle with this essential functionality.

Finally, here’s one additional reason why you shouldn’t think of a MAP as a substitute for TCMA: Google Ads. Without a TCMA, you will struggle with harmonization of your marketing initiatives. Again, here’s why.

Harmonization

When it comes to Google search, only a relative handful of partners can match the brand recognition of a product vendor or service provider. If your organization relies on channel partners to satisfy end customers, this presents a challenge for those that search the web for your goods and services. Your challenge is how to easily and effectively connect customers who find you through a Google search to individual partners best positioned to satisfy their needs.

If you try to achieve this with most MAP tools, you run the risk of missing an elegant handoff from you to your partners. Not so with sophisticated TCMA technology. Take Impartner’s TCMA toolset, which features “Smart Linking” technology that allows vendors to harmonize their content with that of their partners so that end customers who perform a Google search not only get the right product or service information they seek, but the right channel partner as well.

With Smart Linking, Impartner customers can easily blend partner information such as a home page, physical address and contact info with their own marketing content that surfaces in a typical Google search. And they can do this with a thousand partners as easily as they can for a few dozen.

For more on how TCMA can help you provide partners the localization, customization and prioritization they need to make the most of your marketing efforts, ask for an Impartner TCMA demo today.

You won’t be able to inflate a tire with Impartner TCMA, but you sure can harmonize your through channel marketing activities with it. That will get your rolling to wherever you want to go.

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].

Insights and understanding why your partner investments go underutilized if not wasted

By T.C. Doyle

IKEA customers that don’t read directions. Chefs who don’t follow recipes. Workers that do not take advantage of employer-provided benefits. What do these groups have in common?

They are all examples of people that fail to take advantage of knowledge, tools and advantages created expressly for them. The complete list is long and includes doctors who fail to follow carefully developed medical guidelines. (Their patients aren’t much better, according to the CDC, which finds 20-30% of consumers never fill their prescriptions for chronic conditions.)

Why is adherence or utilization of important benefits so poor is so many instances? Complexity, inapplicability and ineffectiveness are some reasons. Human frailties including lack of imagination and even laziness are others. In some instances, the waste is trivial. Not so for tech vendors, manufacturers, insurers and others who squander a staggering sum of time, energy and money on benefits for business partners.

If only there were a better way, right? There is in marketing. Make that partner marketing, specifically. This April, Impartner, the world leader in partner automation technology, is unveiling updated Through Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) technology that removes the obstacles that have historically kept partners from utilizing vendor provided tools and benefits.

Here’s what you need to know.

A TCMAosaurus Is Reborn 

After extensive research and work with vendor customers, Impartner identified why TCMA systems are chronically underutilized. Among other things, business partners complain that ease of use leaves them wanting and that key steps are not automated. In industry after industry, partners either ignore vendor provided tools altogether or struggle mightily to put them to use.

Vendor brands suffer as a result. Take the tech industry, where partner spending on marketing as a percent of revenue is historically low. (For all but the top echelon of channel partners in technology, spending amounts to less than 3% of revenue per partner, according to various studies.) Little wonder that tech brands suffer from brand compliances issues, poor lead attribution and follow-up, muddled marketing campaigns and dismal reporting on key performance metrics.

To be sure, the positive results vendors do enjoy are typically achieved by a finite set of very marketing savvy partners that often represent multiple brands at once. (If they are good at marketing your brand, they are likely adept at marketing the goods and services of your rivals, too.)

This is why so many vendors put their faith in the “long-tail” of business partners . These are the smaller, mid-sized companies that work with SMBs the world over. Historically, this tier of partners is populated with scores of technically astute companies that do not prioritize marketing. Most, in fact, do not employ a full-time marketing professional let alone a marketing team. Because of this, your long-tail never gets unfurled and put to use. Until now.

Impartner’s new TCMA platform offers partners a simple, four-step adoption process can be completed in minutes — literally. After enrolling, partners quickly realize that vendor campaigns will run automatically afterwards, resulting in a steady stream of leads that can flow indefinitely. What is more, all co-branding is automated. No additional partner input is required in order to participate in campaigns once a partner provides its logo and contact information.

Thanks to advances in Impartner’s TCMA platform, vendors can confidently expect their long tail to unfurl to a length never before seen. (Think Brontosaurus-sized.)

The timing could not be better. Again, consider the tech industry. A new study from CompTIA finds that 38% of channel partners are looking to make significant changes to their marketing this year as a result of the pandemic that limited customer engagements throughout 2020. What’s thwarting them, experts believe, is the limited number of professionals available to them and their past experiences with vendor and distributor-provided tools. A robust TCMA tool or service that overcomes their challenges, thus, would be a godsend.

Another reason to take a closer look at TCMA technology, which some joke has been around since the age of dinosaurs, is partners’ desire for help in the post-pandemic era. When asked, “Which of the following facets of joint selling/marketing are most relevant to your firm and/or most likely to contribute value?,” partners ranked “easier and better access to customers and leads” as their No. 1 request, again according to CompTIA research.

In addition to helping addressing partners’ top request, vendors that invest in Impartner TCMA also enjoy other benefits, including:

• Full brand control and compliance automation
• Simple partner opt-in
• Simplified and automatic lead sharing
• Clear vision into lead attribution

As with other Impartner PRM solutions, Impartner TCMA includes a set of features unmatched by any vendor in the industry. This includes Journey Orchestration, Training & Certification, Showcase Syndication, Email Campaigns and more. Be sure to check out the latest on Impartner’s new TCMA technology. Better yet, ask for a demo today.

If you worry you investments into partner marketing technology are under-utilized or worse, you know they are, then stop wrestling with your TCMAosaurus. A new one from Impartner has been reborn and is likely to make other TCMA products extinct.

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].

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?

Accomplish more by following this powerful partner marketing strategy

By T.C. Doyle

Here’s a bold thought: make your partner marketing FREE.

That’s right, FREE as in Frequent, Relevant, Empathetic and Empowered. Here’s what I mean.

Vendors struggle with partner marketing basics every day. They grapple with what to say, how often to say something and in what format. They need not, according to experts. There is a cadence, tone and significance to proper partner communications that can be easily achieved if you follow the simple FREE concepts recently discussed by experts 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.

To better understand the FREE concept, which is a modern update on the venerable marketing adage that says good marketing should be recent, frequent and monetizable, let’s break each element down into simple bites starting with frequent.

Frequent

Just like good journalism, good marketing depends on consistency. In addition to being objective, timely and accurate, a good newspaper, in other words, must hit a reader’s driveway or inbox at a predictable time. When it comes to channel marketing, experts including Heather K. Margolis, the founder and CEO of two well-known advisories, Spark Your Channel and Channel Maven, advises vendors to think in terms of weekly touch points. Communicating via LinkedIn, she suggests, should be done three-to-four times per week. “Go nuts on Twitter,” Margolis says, but post judiciously on Facebook due to the mix of business and personal audiences.

While every vendor’s needs differ, establishing a cadence and then sticking to it are musts in order for your messaging to connect with your intended audience. While it sounds counter-intuitive, sometimes being predictable is the right thing to do with communications, at least as far as frequency is concerned.

Relevant

After you determine when to say something, you must determine what to say. This is perhaps the most difficult step to master. Why is simple: what you want to say is often at odds with what resonates with your audience. The reason is relevancy.

Typically, vendors want to promote their solutions and services at every turn. But communications anchored in product messaging often fall short in terms of relevancy because they fail to factor in what partners are attuned to. Consider channel partners in the tech industry. Their customers no longer prioritize faster and cheaper products. Instead, end customers want answers to business problems. If your messaging to partners is rooted in solutions, great, then partners will respond positively to your message. But if your messages are little more than spec sheets about innovations and not about answers to their customers’ problems, partners will ignore you. That’s a major problem, says Dan Tomaszewski, president of Everything MSP, a tech advisory for channel partners. “If partners don’t know you, they won’t feel comfortable with you.”

Empathetic

Good partner marketing must be “stinking empathetic,” says Janet Schijns, founder and CEO of the JS Group, a Florida-based consultancy that helps organization refine their go-to-market strategies. By “stinking,” Schijns means messaging must be so obviously empathetic that it reeks of compassion and inspiration. This differs from relevancy, which appeals to a potential customer’s brain. In contrast, empathetic messaging connects with audiences in a much deeper way.

If you appeal to an audience’s desires and ambitions, for example, you establish a much deeper level of credibility and authenticity. This helps your audience escape the confines of traditional thinking so they may see problems and opportunities in a new light, Schijns says. When this occurs, intangibles such as quicker, better and more long-lasting seem very attainable.

“You have to remember that you are selling a dream,” says Schijns. “Your messaging, thus, shouldn’t be all about ‘look at me,’ but instead ‘look at you.’”

Empowered

One of the challenges marketers face today is scaling successful messaging. This is due to the sheer volume of messaging that your content must compete with. Good content not only resonates, it also scales.

Today, scale depends on automation more than ever. Without proper tools, marketers cannot reach broad audiences, measure messaging effectiveness or follow up on responses in a timely manner.

In a bid to overcome these limitations, many organizations have developed or invested in various tools. But their scattershot approach leaves them saddled with gaps in functionality that more nimble and/or automated rivals can exploit.

For context, Channel Growth Hacking co-founder Michelle Ragusa-McBain notes the overwhelming majority of decision makers look to five different pieces of content about a service or product before they ever talk to a salesperson. Following a person on their journey and then offering influential content at the appropriate moment requires a level of automation that basic tools simply do not provide.

As a marketer, you must be more than a voyeur or “lazy liker” on LinkedIn, says McBain. You must be a thought and technology leader.

Making partner marketing FREE might not be the first thing that pops into your head when you think of ways to improve your messaging and communications, but it might be the best idea for your improving business.

For more on how technology can help you embrace FREE marketing concepts, be sure to check out what the world leader in partner automation technology, Impartner, has to offer. Ask for a free demo today.

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].

Here are three questions that will help you determine whether you can retire your number

By T.C. Doyle

Ever feel like retiring your channel sales quota is akin to taking down Goliath?

If you do, then take heart: you can overcome your quota Goliath just like David overcame the Philistine who stared him down. Some new thinking may help your cause.

To stimulate new ideas, here are three questions that every channel sales manager and channel salesperson should consider at the start of every month, quarter and year:

• Do I have the right talent?
• Do I have the right processes?
• Do I have the right technology?

Let’s examine each.

Do I Have the Right Talent?

Chances are you have a mix of high-performing channel salespeople, underachievers and sales jockeys that run somewhere in the middle.

You know how to measure their output, but have you measured their suitability? It’s an important question to ask because of how often deliverables, target markets and objectives change. In the tech industry, for example, many salespeople who joined the industry in the client-server era dominated by one-time transactions involving physical goods find themselves struggling in the new era of cloud computing that revolves around digital services sold as monthly subscriptions. To them, everything from compensation to sales cycles to deal financing is completely new and different.

Similarly, channel sales managers find themselves working in a very different market than just a few years ago. The rise of marketplaces, non-transacting partners and new sales motions are but a few of the new ripples that channel sales managers must contend with. Because of these, partner journeys are very different than they were just a decade ago.

Navigating new relationships, expectations and technologies often requires skillsets and dispositions that your existing team simply may not have. To find out if it does, you may need to test the suitability of you channel sales team. Some team members are no doubt ideally suited for these times. But others? Maybe not.

This includes many who enjoyed early success in the field after completing their education brimming with confidence and charm. While glibness and positivity often help in transactional sales, they do not necessarily translate well into a world of more collaborative and consultative channel selling. (If they did, there would be even more improv comedians in sales than there are today.)

Do I Have the Right Processes?

Compensation determines behavior. How many times have you heard that sales maxim? It’s probably more than you can count. But is it true? It’s a question worth pondering whenever you tweak or update your channel sales compensation plans.

In most instances, a channel sales manager or director will adjust reward policies to reward achievement based on key organizational objectives. Most comp plans are devised on the principle that individual salespeople are motivated first and foremost by money. But research and experience suggests this to be incomplete at best. According to the Harvard Business Review, “…stars, laggards, and core performers are motivated by different facets of comp plans.”

Other motivators include:

Peer or industry recognition: At one Silicon Valley tech giant, different global sales teams competed for “Viking Awards” that came with a cash prizes and a cheap, store-bought Viking helmet. One year, the company decided to eliminate the competition. “Cut the money if you must,” salespeople said, “but don’t eliminate the helmet.”

Organizational cohesion: Some people just love sales. They love the competition, comradery, customer engagement — all of it. Some naturally get very distraught when their jobs turn sour. This can happen when individual superstars and mid-range performers clash. Policies that pit team members against each other unnecessarily or unfairly demotivate sales teams as a whole.

Stress reduction: Retiring a quota for some isn’t all about the money; it’s sometimes about “lifting a burden from their shoulders.” To an untrained observer, it might appear that a high-performers love turning over new busines. But it could be they just want to reduce stress. In such instances, process changes might make their workplaces more productive.

Do I Have the Right Technology?

You wouldn’t line up for a single play in competitive football without a helmet, so why have your sales team take the field without proper equipment? It doesn’t make business sense.

Today, “proper equipment” can take on many forms, including world-class marketing tools, customer experience software and relationship management automation.

Relation management technology comes in two forms, customer relationship management (CRM) software and partner relationship management (PRM) software. Today, nearly three-quarters of all businesses and more than 90% of companies with more than 11 employees use CRM software. However, the percent that use PRM software is less, which is surprisingly given the amount of commerce the flows though middlemen or business partners. (Estimates vary but the figure is in excess of 70% in many sectors globally.)

Of those companies that do use PRM technology to help business partners grow, manage and support their sales, a surprisingly number rely on homegrown PRM tech stacks that have been cobbled together using different software components or built from the ground up internally. Homegrown tech stacks don’t typically scale, anticipate future needs or integrate easily with broader organizational objectives such as migrating to the cloud or standardizing around a core set of software providers.

All of this can thwart even the best of salespeople, including partner sales specialists, from trying to achieve their objectives. Without the proper equipment, in other words, your salespeople may as well be banging their heads around with little to show for it but bruises.

A better way? Invest in the tools your salespeople need to achieve their objectives. Better yet, let Impartner show you why nearly eight of every 10 customers who invest in PRM say they have gained a competitive advantage.

And don’t forget to ask the right questions that will help you take down your quota Goliath.

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!