The important takeaway is that they effectively grew their partner program in mere days to handle the unforeseen sales opportunities, a feat that could not be matched through Direct Sales strategies.
Further Round-Out Your Offering for a Competitive Edge
Need another reason why you should use channel partners? How about the fact that their offering combined with yours could outshine the competition.
Partners’ products can address gaps within your own or integrate to augment your capabilities. Prospects generally prefer to use one software solution that satisfies multiple needs rather than multiple, disconnected platforms. Collaborating with partners to create comprehensive packages can simplify customers’ ongoing expenses, data collection, and internal processes.
The result? The joint-offering is more attractive than the sum of its parts.
Share Marketing Costs to Improve Reach
As mentioned above, channel partners collect a percentage of the profits from every new deal they register. Therefore, it’s common for them to contribute to a percentage of the marketing costs, as well.
To take it one step further, partners will sometimes approach channel managers with their own co-marketing initiatives rather than vice versa. Establish a marketing development fund budget and approval process in which you partially finance their marketing team to promote your products.
It’s a win-win: partners feel empowered and you spend less on Marketing personnel and advertising spending. Suddenly, your budget can achieve new reach.
Less Upfront Costs Means Less Risk
A metric decision-makers repeatedly face is the return on an investment, affectionately known as ROI. The greater the upfront investment, the greater the risk of failing to make a profit or break even.
As previously established, channel partners require reduced internal staff and marketing spending, and they can accelerate the ramp up time of sales campaigns. As a result, risk-mitigating benefits of the program include:
• If a new audience responds poorly to a product or related messaging, you’ll have invested less time and money than if you utilized Direct Sales.
• If a promotion doesn’t deliver expected results, you share the related cost with partners.
• If a prospect falls through, you didn’t waste your own time on the fruitless lead.
Bonus: Your Competitors Probably Have Channel Partners
As evident by the many real-world examples above, an increasing number of B2B companies are nurturing their channel partner programs and seeing increased sales and improved international presence. The more traction you let competitors gain in building a loyal following amongst both partners and users, the harder it will be to later sway them to your product.
Why use channel partners? Chances are, these companies will be participating in a program regardless and selling software solutions. Why not have them promote yours over a competitors’?
Are there Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Create a Partner Program
No sales approach is without a downside, including the use of channel partners. The primary complaint is the lack of control a company has over how its products are sold and its brand portrayed. However, there are steps you can take to mitigate this.
• Balance process uniformity and custom sales approaches. The more procedures and supporting materials you have in place, the less ambiguity partners will experience. Yet, if you apply a rigid, one-size-fits-all methodology to your sales approach, your messaging won’t resonate with some audiences.
The solution: segment your partners and customers, and create unique playbooks for each. By equipping sales partners with the right script for specific types of prospects, you eliminate their need to go off-script.
Sophisticated PRM tools like Allbound will let you customize partners’ access to only the learnings that apply to their industry, experience-level, geography, and role. Similarly, the tool can suggest specific playbooks to partners based on information they provide about registered deals.
• The right tools lets partners operate independently but within predetermined boundaries. Co-branding materials is one scenario in which many partners inadvertently misrepresent the other organization. Without the proper tools in place, partners are left with two options:
• Request that the channel manager co-brand materials on their behalf. This email will be one of many that their point of contact receives throughout the day. By the time the partner manager fulfills the request, a prospect’s interest in the product may have dwindled.
• Co-brand materials on their own. Enter photoshop! Logos may be sloppily slapped onto materials missized or discolored. The text could be changed to misrepresent your offering. The document itself could be considered off-limits for co-branding, but you have no way to stop their good intentions.
PRM software can prevent both of the above problems. The portal’s co-branding capabilities let the partners customize items without your direct involvement. However, you can control what they can and cannot do based on how you classified the program participant and the document itself.
Bottom Line: Channel Partners Can Benefit Your Bottom Line
Short-term, use channel partners to expedite the creation of a customer base. Long-term, your program’s framework and tools can continue to support exponential partner growth with minor internal changes. Partners can benefit your reputation, audience reach, and overall product offering.
To learn about other ways channel partners can benefit your brand, schedule a free consultation with one of our Channel Experts.