To recruit new partners effectively, you need to make your company and partnership offering attractive. Almost all of your partner prospects, at least the ones you want, are already busy selling other solutions to other customers and making other people money. So you need to introduce your value proposition into that ecosystem.
Finding the right partners that meets the needs of your business is always difficult. To make things even more challenging, just knowing which partners you want does not mean you can get them to commit to your company and its go-to-market plan. That is where the below best practices can help. If pursued together, they will greatly enhance your ability to close the deal on new partnerships.
- Develop a partner recruitment process. The process of going from initial contact to a signed partner relationship mirrors a sales process. So yours should too. To do this, you should implement a multi-step process, designed with an outward-in view from the partners to your organization. You should have Job Aids, stages, exit criteria, leading indicators of success, pipeline, forecast, management inspection, and so on. You should boast all the trappings of a fully-figured sales process for your partner recruitment.
- Create a compelling Recruitment Package. This package would include policies, procedures, and support systems to entice a channel partner. The Package must have: how much money the partner will make, proof of product quality (testimonials, references), demonstration of sales and marketing support, price protection, guarantee/warranty, coop dollars, free sales support info, major account sales support, product customization, lead gen program, media plan, special pricing assistance, communications program, meaningful product training, territorial integrity, free trials.
- Perform deep research on the prospective partner. It is surprising how often companies engage with potential partners without really knowing much about their business. So before making the hard pitch, ensure that you have penetrating insight into their customers, sales model, products/services, marketing capabilities, industry reputation, geographic coverage, corporate history, technical prowess, and management structure.
- Reconcile your solution with the ones they are already selling. One of the most difficult challenges to overcome is to determine how your solution will “fit” with their existing portfolio. Is your solution uncomfortably close to others that are already in their selling bag? Do you close a product/services gap for them? It is vital to develop a compelling story around the specific synergy between your solution and all the others with which their sales teams are already familiar.
- Pilot new Partnerships. Just as with a new prospect for your solution, a partner prospect may not be willing to jump in with both feet. In many cases, there are uncontrollable risk factors and other uncertainties that can only be addressed through time and experience. Therefore, you should offer a defined, measurable, time-bound pilot deployment that proves the partnership potential and gains you early supporters in the partner organization.
- Enrich the compensation program. Especially early on in a channel partner relationship, the attractiveness of the compensation program is paramount. Initially, there are no success stories to tout, no tradition to uphold, no past practices to follow. So compensation needs to be rich enough to start cranking the wheel. If you skimp on this you might as well not do anything. Eventually, when the partnership is sound and the legacy of success established, the compensation plan can settle into something more ‘reasonable.’ Until then, ensure there is a lot of leverage, little friction, and plenty of SPIFFs in your program.
- Be clear about Channel conflict. Channel partners have a well-honed spidey sense for channel conflict with the direct selling teams of their partners. They will ask difficult questions about territory alignment, account assignment, deconfliction rules, and so on. Any hesitancy or indeterminacy in your answers will be interpreted negatively by a potential partner. So get your story straight and ensure that the leaders of the direct sales force are prepared to uphold their end of the arrangements with your new partner(s).