As an ISV/software solution or SaaS company, how do you attract your ideal customer’s attention?
What indicators do you look for, to know your target customers are ready for your solution?
At what point in your customers’ journey do you seek to engage, qualify and guide them into your sales process?
Picture the start of the journey of your ideal customer. At customers’ earliest stage, they realize they have a need and then seek to understand that need. Then follows multiple possible steps they can go through to learn, assess, evaluate, select, implement, use and fully benefit from a solution. Hopefully, your solution.
Part of the Customer Journey:
The customer journey represents the path the customer takes from recognizing they have a need, all the way forward to solving that need. All your marketing, sales, delivery, and customer success processes are part of that customer journey.
Also, along your customers’ journey, there are many other companies, or company types, such as consultants, services providers, VARS/value-added resellers, implementers, and other ISVs/solution companies, often of many different types.
How can these fellow travelers help you on this customer journey, AND how can you help them?
Imagine if you had a partner proposition that appeals to each company type along the customer journey. You would have a very healthy and vibrant partner ecosystem.
The image below shows an example seeking to align with consulting-type companies along the customer journey.
In the needs you solve, and related needs, all along your customer journey:
• What types of consultants are helping your customers assess their needs and guide them to solve these needs?
• Can you bring benefits to help these consultants improve their business offerings? An offering needs to be more than referral fees. E.g., HubSpot defined the Inbound Marketing Services sector. They literally wrote the book on it.
• What services companies can you remove barriers for to enable them to generate more business?
• What other ISV/solution companies remove barriers for the customer along the journey, and that would make a good partnership?
When selecting sales channel partners, it is essential to first understand their business and then determine how you fit within their business. Then you can define how you work together throughout the customer journey. For example, a consulting company analyses a customer’s needs, proposes a plan, supports system selection, and is then active in system rollout and change management.
Imagine defining your entire customer journey along with your customer and fellow travellers defining the roles and hand-over points in a standard process that brings greater benefit to all.
Partnering success depends on alignment. Seek to where you can align for the customers and each other’s benefit.