Whether you’re ready to go to market or looking to extend your current capabilities, adding partner resellers can shorten and improve the process. Partners offer low upfront costs and bring established customer relationships to your organization.
In a nutshell, partners sell third-party products to end users at a markup, generally with a combination of consultation, configuration, or customization services. For channel managers, they enhance the overall value of your products or services by adding additional features that benefit your customers. While partners are undoubtedly beneficial to your company, finding the best resellers can be a challenge. To help, let’s look at how you should recruit and retain resellers.
Build Your Ultimate Profile
To identify the best resellers, it’s important to do your research. Not all partners are alike, and although some LOOK like they might be a good fit, you need to understand HOW they have built their businesses and what type of customer they actively sell to. Resellers generally have authority in certain product certifications, service expertise, or geographic regions, so your profile must be deeper than just the size of a market, annual revenue, or the number of technical resources. This is the strategy phase you need to put in the extra work on; to scrutinize your prospects.
When building out this potentially forensic-level profile, try and ask yourself very specific questions about the business model of your ideal partner. Questions could include:
- What is the potential for the partner to drive business?
- Is the partner experienced in our product area or with our specific products?
- Does the prospect have a qualified, trained sales team and technical team?
- What is the prospect’s current financial situation and potential (revenue, cash flow, profits, etc.)?
- Does the prospect have relationships or experience in areas that will benefit our products or expand our coverage?
- Is the partner built to handle my “way of doing business,” such as a recurring revenue model?
A simple starting point to identify the “ideal match” is to consider leveraging your own network and marketing efforts to identify prospects. LinkedIn has established itself as a reputable social networking platform for recruiting and allows you to search companies using specific keywords, certifications, and locations. Once you identify a model prospect, it provides a foundation to identify and find more potential partners in different locations across the country.
While there is a surplus of potential partners, quantity doesn’t always equal quality. Be sure to put in an appropriate amount of effort when searching for your ideal partners.
Outline Your Value Proposition
Once you’ve done your research, built your ideal profile and identified prospects, it’s time to entice these potential partners. Because resellers work with numerous products and companies, outlining the benefits of working with your organization CAN work in your favor. Putting together a package of your company’s value proposition, marketing plan, and support system can help convince prospects to choose your organization.
Generally, partners have three overarching goals:
- Generating revenue
- Keeping their customers happy
- Keeping costs manageable
In addition to developing and maintaining close relationships with their customers, resellers should know that partnerships make economic sense. To help establish relationships out of the gate, you’ll need to show them how to sell your product. Be clear about your target audience, help identify common problems, and have them understand that you will position them for success. And, back them up; show them that you have their back when they need it. It’s all part of being easy to do business with.
Partners are generally only excited if they see that your product is really selling; so let your numbers speak. Having already generated sales of your own is vital to showing traction. To truly attract prospects, consider handing them closed deals they can finalize.
Evaluate and Retain Current Partners
If you have a base of partners, looking inward at your current resellers can help illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of your current channel strategy. Not only does evaluating existing reseller relationships help identify areas for improvement, but it also helps you recognize partners who are performing extremely well; and those who are not.
The primary question you should be asking yourself is how much your partners are invested in the relationship with your company and your products. Are they bringing in business? Are they committed to creating long-lasting relationships with your customers? Finally, are they up-to-speed on training and certifications? If a partner is not adding value to your program, then it’s time to move on. Take your ideal profile and go find your next superstar.
All partners are not created equal, and treating them as such can result in wasted efforts. Ensuring that prospects are engaged from day one is only the first step. To truly evaluate the strength of your channel program, take time to score your partners to identify where and how you can focus your efforts. These sales enablement models provide insight based on the partner’s strategic value, revenue, and growth potential.
