Re-engaging Partners
A partner can sometimes go dark after a few months despite your best efforts. Even still, there are times when you’re in regular contact with your partner, but there aren’t any new deals coming through. This may signal it’s time to re-engage your partner. There are a few different strategies you can implement to do so.
Collaborate on a Co-marketing Campaign
Consider working together on a new campaign. This could be a joint email blast, webinar, eBook download, or another campaign that allows you to work together, combine the power of your resources, and connect with each other’s audiences.
Re-connect on Goals
Over time, you may have lost sight of each other’s goals. Take time to sit down with your partner and revisit each of your goals. Remember, this conversation should be about how you can help them achieve their goals. Ideally, if it’s a good-fit partnership, achieving their goals will lend well to achieving yours too.
Utilize Your PRM
Allbound’s PRM has a feature called Partner Journey Automation, which can be set to alert a Channel Account Manager when a partner hasn’t logged into the system in a set amount of time, registered a deal, or completed training. This tool can also send emails to the partner themselves, making re-engaging partners significantly less manual.
SPIFF Campaigns to Spur Sales
Even loyal partners later in the lifecycle may need an extra incentive every now and then. Reignite excitement while achieving sales goals by activating a SPIFF program in which partners can participate in short-lived sales competitions.
Divesting from a Partnership
Ideally, you sort bad-fit partners out before you get in too deep with them. However, there are some situations where a partnership doesn’t end up working out, even if they initially met all of your requirements and your team did everything right during the relationship.
If you find yourself connecting with your partner for bi-weekly check-ins and discussing the same opportunities that haven’t gone anywhere for months, it may be time to divest from a partnership.
This doesn’t mean you’re closing the door on the relationship. Still, if your team has done all they can to re-engage partners and support them with relevant resources, it’s not beneficial to continue spending time on a partnership that isn’t yielding any results.
Create a plan for your account manager to scale down engagement with that partner, without going completely dark. This is where automation and your PRM can be especially helpful. For example, instead of continuing to engage bi-weekly for check-ins, you can instead set up a cadence of emails to share resources and check in with your partner every few months.
It can take up to a year to realize a partner is a bad fit. However, don’t think of this time as wasted — every partnership you engage in is a new opportunity to learn more about your ecosystem and potential customers.
Strategically Manage Each Stage of the Channel Partner Lifecycle
Qualification and training are incredibly important when you’re in the first stages of the channel partner lifecycle. Start by establishing your IPP and then seek out partners based on how well they match. From there, use your PRM to begin training and onboarding.
Once your partners are activated and onboarded, be sure to measure their engagement and success metrics. If partners become unresponsive or stop driving results, consider implementing a re-engagement campaign to reignite the relationship. If a lack of engagement continues over time, you may need to divest from a bad-fit partnership so you can more effectively use your resources elsewhere.
Allbound makes it easy to manage channel partners at each stage. With automation capabilities, a content library, and more engagement tools. Get started with a free demo to see just how much Allbound can support your channel.