Whether you are starting on your partnering journey, pushing to grow your partner network, or seeking to drive success from your 100s of partners, your partner program success depends on three key areas.
These three tightly interwoven areas are the foundation of partnering success, and the first things to need to shape in starting and building your partner program.
The three pillars are Your Partner Proposition, Partner Fit, and Partner Enablement.
Your Partner Proposition needs to be compelling to secure interest, motivate partners, and stand out from the partners’ alternatives.
Partner Fit is selecting the right partner company types, that fit your partner proposition and align with the partner’s business helping them meet their objectives.
Partner Enablement is providing the partners with the capabilities they need to be successful in selling and delivering your product. Effective Partner Enablement is showing up where the partners want and need help. Your help benefits the partner’s business, adding to Your Partner Proposition.
A weak Partner Proposition will cost you much time, money and frustration, causing you to question your whole partner program. In this scenario, you’re working harder to get speaking to partners, taking longer to convince partners, and if you do secure partners, your struggles continue to motivate partners. A weak Partner Proposition is like trying to buy groceries with Monopoly money. What you’re offering may be of great value someplace else, but not here.
A misaligned Partner Fit targets the wrong partner types or failing to understand the partner’s objectives and thinking that your partners will change to sell your product. Poor Partner Fit will cost you much wasted energy and effort.
Poor Partner Enablement expects the partner to invest in learning to sell your product with little help from you and hoping their sales teams spend less time selling the products they know, to sell yours. Poor Partner Enablement is not investing sufficiently to train and support your partners from onboarding and ongoing. Poor Partner Enablement asks your partners to jump into the deep end and trust that it will be worth it if they learn to swim. Why should they?
Imagine you selected the right partners such that Your Partner Propositions fits so well in their business, that they require minimal changes and effort in their business, to market, sell and deliver your products driving continued mutual success:
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Your product solves critical needs for the target customers and decision-makers.
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Selling your product enables the right type and size of deals to meet your partner company’s objectives.
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Your marketing materials and marketing support efforts align with the partners’ approach, customer needs, and business drivers, allowing you to continually help them build awareness, generate, or even provide leads.
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The partners’ sales team can quickly identify where you fit with their customers, and how to start and progress opportunities, and see how they can be equally or more successful than their current opportunities.
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The partners’ delivery teams understand how to implement your solution, alongside their existing solutions and services.
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The partners’ customer success or account management teams understand how to best enable and support customers to achieve the best value from your product.
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Your Product is part of your partners’ future growth plans and helps them achieve their business success, and each partner is part of your success.
Work should never stop in improving Your Partner Proposition, Partner Fit, and Partner Enablement as they impact every aspect of your partner program. Investing to make your three pillars more impactful will directly benefit your partner program’s success.
Download The Partner Proposition Checklist, and see if you are covering all areas.
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