MarketStar Blog | Partner

Engaging the partner channel isn’t as easy as it once was. Partners are more diverse and specialized, margins have thinned, and hard-good solutions are rapidly transitioning from one-time fees (with service contracts) to subscription-based solutions. Those companies who recognize that the partner channel is changing, and embrace the change, will be positioned for success in the coming years. But, those who choose to maintain business as usual, will likely see their channel slip through their fingers. 

Cloud services have become the foundation of enterprise computing. Migrating enterprise resources to the cloud gives corporations more agility and cuts costs. To add a new enterprise application or more data storage, you simply add more cloud capacity. If you are selling enterprise services, then you must include cloud services and cloud service providers in your sales strategy.

If you are in sales (or a movie buff), you have undoubtedly heard the phrase “ABC, always be closing,” from Glengarry Glen Ross. That may be a good motivational mantra for selling real estate, but it’s less effective in B2B sales. When dealing with lead qualification for B2B technology, selling it makes more sense to think of ABC as “always be consulting.”

When sales organizations look back on 2020, one of their main “lessons learned” might be the importance of Customer Success. With so much uncertainty impacting the economy, sales teams are eager for effective ways to reconnect with their customers and bring new ones into the fold. This year and well into the future, Customer Success will be a key differentiator between losing sales and enabling significant growth. Many companies get customer success vs sales confused to their detriment. 

If you are selling enterprise technology, then you probably are selling cloud services. The cloud is here to stay, and everything-as-a-service sales are outpacing traditional enterprise software sales. Cloud services are faster to deploy, less expensive, and easier to manage. Cloud computing is being used to handle data storage, business applications hosting, custom development, and more. The cloud is driving most of today’s technology buying decisions. Migration to the cloud is also taking decision-making out of the hands of IT since you now are selling business solutions to multiple stakeholders.

One of the fastest ways to expand enterprise sales is by enlisting help from channel partners, but to be effective, you also need a partner relationship management strategy. To make your channel partners effective, you have to provide the tools and support they need for success.

Any company looking to increase revenue should consider a channel partner program. Naturally, you look to your in-house sales team first to help build revenue, but it can cover only part of the market. A well-established partner channel can help you capture untapped revenue. By collaborating with the right channel partners, you can access new revenue sources and new customers that you may never have known existed.

When you have a channel partner program, you need to rely on your channel partners to manage not only customer sales but also the overall customer experience. In the age of software as a service and recurring revenue models, everyone in the value chain has to assume responsibility for customer success. However, your channel partners are on the front line, since they closed the sale and are the first line of defense for customer fulfillment. Therefore, the vendor’s job is to enable channel partner success in order to optimize the customer’s experience.