While channel partners (a partner company and/or value added reseller) do not necessarily create an automatic demand, using them to market your software product offers numerous benefits, including a powerful ability to drive growth, when done right. That’s why we’ve outlined a few key things to focus on in order to successfully use channel partners to market your software product.
1. Approach the Channel with the Right Mindset
Being straightforward and honest about your motivations will allow for greater communication and understanding between you and your partners. When coming up with ways to utilize channel partners to market you product, think of your partners as employees; understand and respect them. Share information, look out for their best interests, and stay continually invested in helping them develop and grow.
This means you should also be sure to understand your partner’s business model and motivations, respect their relationship with their clients, and prove that you are looking to build a long-term business relationship with them. Think about what you can build into your program to help your partners grow and succeed in their business. Your partner program will see the greatest success if you have built a strong, cross-functional team.
Lastly, educate internal teammates and partner prospects to help them understand how the channel model will work for all those involved, and commit to eliminating channel conflict. You can eliminate channel conflict by avoiding direct orders or establishing explicit rules on how potential conflicts are handled. In ensuring they are never at risk of losing a deal to your direct sales team, you establish trust.
2. Design a Well-Thought Out Partner Program
Focus on listening, learning, and confirming during program development, so that once executed, you can provide clear, aligned, and scalable solutions. Going with what you think will work best in the channel is okay, but still talk to customers and potential partners to see what their struggles are and how to help. Get a good idea of what would help them build their respective businesses by researching partner prospects and their business needs upfront. Exerting additional due diligence once you start seeing wins will ensure you stay on top of things and guarantee scalability.
Core Elements of a Channel Partner Program
- Stable product
- Formal outline of program
- Initial contractual framework
You’ll want something agile; a solid foundation to sustain and support your program, and the agility to grow it.
Basic Process for Defining a Strong Channel Strategy
- Foundational Research and Discovery. Get an internal consensus of the big picture concepts and ideals.
- Operational Alignment. Determine what it takes to bring the vision to life: resources, skill sets, organizational adjustments.
- Thoughtful Execution. Establish protocols for protection against miscommunication and oversight to build trust and accountability.
- Continuous Evolution. Pay attention to how relationships and processes are changing and influencing your business.
Set Smart Goals for Your Channel
Be sure to manage your expectations when setting both long- and short-term goals for partner recruitment, enablement and adoption, and sales and revenue. Research what other companies are doing with their partner programs to determine what to do and what not to do and how to set realistic goals.
3. Build a Solid Team
The channel touches every aspect of your business, and even influences your product based on partner feedback in regards to features and usability. Building a cross-functional team ensures survival and scalability and allows for engagement and support. You want to have company-wide support from the top-down and the bottom-up, and make sure that all involved are fully versed in and committed to your channel philosophy.
4. Aim for Flawless Program Execution
First, you’ll want to do your research to make sure you find the right partners. Your partners can make or break your channel program, so ensure that they are compatible philosophically, operationally, and in terms of proficiency to perform.
Then, you will want to focus on getting the right partners on board through recruitment. To do this you should pitch prospects on the value of becoming a partner. Think marketing, not sales. Show how you solve resellers challenges first, then sell a platform (not a product), and keep your barriers to entry low.
And finally, you will want to enable your partners and help them succeed. This is where you invest in empowering your partners in their own business. Start by establishing an on-going dialog for continued engagement, and choose the right materials to create and distribute for your channel.
5. Measure and Optimize Channel Performance
It’s important to understand what drives the success of software products: acquiring, retaining, and monetizing customers. Following general measurement best practices like having clear goals, tracking progress, and watching channel vs direct performance will allow you to gain insights into what is and isn’t working well for your channel. You can then use what you learn to optimize your channel performance.
Keeping these things in mind will help guide you in creating and setting up your partner channel. A couple companies who have seen great success with their channel partner programs are Salesforce and Hubspot. As of June last year, Hubspot has brought in over 40% of their customers through their program, which is a testament to the powerful potential of the channel partner.