Given the uncertainty of the market today, every business is pursuing every opportunity to improve its sales and revenue. One potential sales strategy that quite a few companies are exploring is the channel partner program. Though it is not a new concept, partner programs are being adopted rapidly with companies finding it very rewarding. It helps them penetrate new markets, onboard new customers, and maximize profits.
If you’ve not yet tried a channel partner program, and are not sure how to begin your journey, you have come to the right place. In this blog post, we will discuss how you can build the program following the channel partner program’s best practices.
What is a channel partner program?
A channel partner program is a kind of business collaboration where one company forms a partnership with a third party to bring indirect sales. It is essentially a revenue channel that is powered by your partner’s market reach providing value for both parties. You can identify your channel partner by considering factors like industry, business model, clientele, and market reach. As a business you can implement the partner program through multiple models, underling it with a loyalty program for channel partners.
Affiliate Partner
In this model, you collaborate with a person or organization to leverage the audience they’ve built in the market.
Referral partner
Through a referral partner, your offerings get recommended to an audience. Once the referral converts into a business, your partner will get a percentage from the earnings or other incentives.
Reseller partner
A reseller partner promotes your brand along with their products and services in their sales program.
Building your channel partner program
Channel partner programs have a high potential to bring high-quality leads to your business with very little downside. All you need to do is build an effective program following channel partner program best practices that attract revenue-generating partners. Below we have compiled some simple steps to create your partner program.
Step 1: Start with a solid value proposition
If anyone comes across your brand, they should have an interest in learning about your products or services in detail. You make this happen through an effective value proposition.
A value proposition is simply a statement of how people using your offerings benefit from them. It typically covers customer pain points, their gains, and why that is so important to them. Once you define your value proposition, it is always a good idea to have it evaluated against your competitors to ensure you didn’t miss any key points.
Step 2: Outline your customer journey
Before you bring in a partner to help you with sales, you must have a very clear understanding of how your sales pipeline works. This is also the phase where you tweak the process to make it more customer-centric for better conversions. You will be expected to teach your partners what goes on at every step of the sales journey. So, it is important to have a well-documented customer journey.
Step 3: Understand an ideal partner profile
Your senior management team must put together certain criteria to enlist a channel partner. A set of qualifiers will help you identify who can be an ideal channel partner for your brand. Organizations usually consider operating revenue, existing client base, resource pool for partnership, and technical capabilities among other things to pick a partner.
Step 4: Decide your channel program structure
We discussed the four types of channel partner programs earlier in the article. If you got the idea that you must pick just one, then you’re mistaken. You can have multiple partner programs running in parallel. Most organizations have more than one type of partner program, with some others having all four running at the same time. As long as you have a clear set of rules for each model and you follow channel partner best practices, you are good to go. It is also a common practice to have tier-based partner programs like bronze, silver, gold, and platinum with each band having its own loyalty program for channel partners.
Step 5: Outline your partner’s journey
In most aspects, your channel partners are similar to employees. They will need onboarding, regular training, help with marketing or selling, and a clearly defined plan to scale the partnership. Organizations usually begin the channel partner program with referral as the first level of collaboration, followed by reseller or distributor, implementation partner, and final technology partner. Please note that neither this order nor the levels are absolute.
Step 6: Create your program collateral & documents
As a main organization initiating the channel partner program, you must be ready with a set of collaterals and documents even before you onboard your first partner. These include,
- Marketing collateral: These are sales enablement material like brochures, presentations, videos, or any other content that will help them pitch your offerings better.
- Communication practices: While it is your partner doing the marketing and some part of sales, it is your brand that is being put out. Therefore, you must very strictly outline the rules that your partners need to play by.
- Legal documents: This includes the commission structure and payment terms, partner agreement, and other legal paperwork your partner will need to kickstart your indirect sales.
Step 7: Set goals and objectives for your partner
A partnership and incentives may not be motivation enough for your channel partners to attract new business for you. To ensure that your partner is utilizing its full potential to facilitate indirect sales, you need to define the goals and objectives of the partnership. By meeting with your partners on a regular basis and reaffirming the value of the partnership, you can push them to generate more business,
Before you build a partner program
Although we listed 7 steps to build your channel partner program, you can add more depending on your specific requirements. Working on your channel partner program is a process of constant reworking to hone it. You can follow all the channel partner program best practices and run a loyalty program for channel partners, yet it is likely to be unsuccessful. That is because you failed to customize the program for your industry and business model. Even before you create a partner program, get a thorough understanding of your own objectives and goals.
