Blog

In this month’s PartnerPath Trailblazer Forum, seven participants discussed elements to consider when designing a SaaS partner program. From the attentive and lively discussion, it was clear the elements fall into six buckets – and that each element depends on several factors such as company goals, product complexity, end-customer target, history of channel relationships and overall size of partner ecosystem. Think about these six elements and know that ultimately your SaaS partner program will be unique to your situation. There is no one right answer for how to deal with these elements.

6 Ways to Adapt

As an extrovert, today’s milestone of one month stuck at home is particularly traumatic. The San Francisco Bay Area was among the first to receive orders to Shelter in Place, and I’m going a little crazy. To distract myself from missing large gatherings (or any gatherings), I’ve been pondering: how is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the solution provider ecosystem and the vendors that rely on indirect channels?

This month, CEO Diane Krakora attended the Cisco Partner Summit in Las Vegas. In this short video, listen to her chat about Cisco DevNet, the developer program that delivers APIs, SDKs and sandbox to developers. It's critical that partners have the ability to build solutions and create customer outcomes.

This month, CEO Diane Krakora attended the Cisco Partner Summit in Las Vegas. On day two, she listened to numerous roundtables where the terms customer experience, customer success, customer satisfaction and customer lifecycle were used interchangeably. AHHHH! Listen to her short video explaining why these are all different and then focus in on the critical element of customer success.

This month, CEO Diane Krakora attended the Cisco Partner Summit in Las Vegas. On day one, she attended the keynote from CEO Chuck Robbins and found several of his key points interesting, in particular the idea of engaging different types of partners and examining unique partner value. Listen to her quick take on the day.

At a recent vendor conference, I presented on the significant roles vendors and their partners play in customer success. To highlight the urgency with which vendors should help their partners, I cited data from our 2019 State of Partnering study: 67% of solution providers haven’t yet invested in the people, methodologies and technologies to be effective at customer success. After what I thought was a fabulous presentation with moments of greatness, an attendee came up and asked me, “so how do I do this and help my partners invest in customer satisfaction?” Epic fail. After making sure it wasn’t a slip of the tongue, I realized the difference between customer satisfaction and customer success may not always be clear. So here goes.

Five from Cisco Live!

This week, CEO Diane Krakora is in San Diego, CA for the Cisco Live! annual customer and partner conference. After a full day of keynotes, sessions and meetings, she has five main takeaways from Day 1. Watch her short video ruminating on these five main points.

1. Cisco is a partner-centric organization (reporting that 90% of their business comes through partners)
2. the importance of new buying centers (line of business buyers)
3. the focus on customer success
4. what is a partner’s DNA?
5. why perform to transform

The Best Use for Best Practices

This week, CEO Diane Krakora was in Carlsbad, CA (near San Diego) for the Channel Focus North America Conference. On Day 3, she attended more sessions in an extremely busy and content-filled last day. During many sessions, channel executives shared details on their partner programs, structures, business models, and best practices. Diane noticed attendees frantically taking notes and has this caution, "put everything into context." Hear why she thinks you shouldn't implement what others are doing without taking a closer look at your own partner maturity.

Keynote: New Channels New Challenges

This week, CEO Diane Krakora is in Carlsbad, CA (near San Diego) for the Channel Focus North America Conference. On Day 2, she attended 10 hours of sessions which included 1 keynote, 3 tracks and 12 workshops. (Alas, she can't be in multiple sessions at once!) Watch this 4-minute video to hear her comments on some of the interesting points made in the keynote by Gavriella Schuster titled, "New Channels New Challenges - How should a smart vendor respond?"