Why Build A Partner Program

What did the fish say when she swam into a wall?

Dam!

We are often asked by technology companies why they should build partner programs. The answer we should provide:

Dams!

Whether you’re a born in the cloud SaaS, a traditional hardware manufacturer, a data center, IoT provider, or something else, competing in a sea of technology is full of dams; particularly if you don’t have a partner program. Here are three dams you’ll run into if your technology does not have a proper partner channel.

1. Companies, regardless of their size, never have enough sales people and never have access to a wide enough ecosystem of potential customers. When you establish a functional partner program, you recruit partners that matter to you. But, it isn’t one-sided. Partners join you because you matter to them. This reciprocal relationship feeds new leads in both directions. The technology company provides opportunities to the partner that they would not have received otherwise, and the partner brings new customers and opportunities to the technology company that they never would have had access to. The ROI for both companies will quickly exceed the sum of the two parts (1+1>3)

2. Loyalty to your brand. Establishing brand loyalty is VERY difficult when you don’t have a partner program that benefits resellers of every relevant type, size, and product structure. Businesses always talk about the value they provide their customers, simply because most companies don’t want to compete on cost. Value and execution lead to loyalty and stickiness. Partner programs provide benefits that offer value, above the financial, to those that participate in the program. Stop competing solely on cost.

3. Companies often cannot easily scale because there is frequently a disproportionate relationship between adding overhead to support more customers and ensuring predictable and consistent revenue on the product or technology. Adding a partner ecosystem allows technology companies to support their channels without having to support every aspect of the customer engagement, thereby reducing overhead attached to lower margin products and services, and increasing overhead support on high value channel sales activities.

Overcoming the dam is not easy, and your company has to be committed to the partner program if you decide to go in that direction. There will be times where you’ll wonder if the time you’ll spend is worth it. There are MANY examples of technology channel success. Here are a few of the many benefits you’ll be able to leverage if you take the time to put together a channel partner network.

1. Financial benefits in the form of revenue growth and bottom line profit. Many technology companies report that their channels generate over 50% of the sales for their businesses (50% is actually a pretty low number). bChannels interviews channel partners quite often. When we do, it’s amazing to see the commitment and loyalty they have to the technology company that has shown some interest in them. These programs drive loyal channel partners who pass revenue through to your organization, with limited required overhead, equaling significant bottom line profits.

1. As partners become trained and certified in your technology, they become advocates for your brand. Unless you get in your own way by providing shoddy materials, products, and trainings, partners believe in the companies on which they spend time educating and certifying. Not only do they drive revenue but they advocate for your company in their business and with their customers, and when they exit their current organization for greener pastures. Educated partners will take your technology with them wherever they go.

1. Channels take your product to verticals you hadn’t thought of. In our consulting we consistently get into conversations around whether a solution should be sold vertically or horizontally. Verticals are really great but they often take a lot of asset customization that has to be built every time your technology enters a new vertical. Channel partners know their own specific niches, their verticals. When selling through channel, one of the best benefits you’ll receive is that they’ll take your product, service, solution along for the ride, to their vertical, on your behalf. Your solution assets will simply need to be custom enough that your horizontal can adapt to their vertical.

When building a channel it’s important to remember that you will have to invest in what you’re building and you must do it right or you won’t see the advantages you seek. There is a setup and management cost of creating the program and then executing on it. If the process is done poorly, it will consume unnecessary time and other resources and the partners will exit for an adjacent program that provides more benefit to them. But, if you do it correctly, if you know your program is better than your competitor, if it’s seen as an advantage to your partners, you stand to gain a significant amount of success.

bChannels helps companies understand the elements needed to create, develop, manage, and execute on the world’s largest channel partner programs. We’ve leveraged this expertise to develop, build, and assist on these programs for both Tier 1 and Tier 2 technology companies. Given the opportunity, we can help you overcome the dams you face and build a meaningful revenue stream for your technology business.

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