Blog

In our recent channel chief roundtable the Partner Engagement Lifecycle was one of the many topics we attempted to tackle and wrestle to the ground. Our goal was to collaborate across the 15 channel chiefs in the room – from Google, SAP, IBM, Westcon, Cylance, Avaya, F5 Networks, DocuSign and additional well-recognized companies – to develop some answers or at least establish best practices across several areas.

Moving Beyond Email

We recently held another of our infamous channel chief roundtable events where a dozen channel leaders across company size and channel maturity gather to discuss trends, opportunities and challenges they’re facing in growing a partner ecosystem. The topic for this session was driving the partner experience – why, how and where vendors can enhance the partners experience, increasing engagement and ultimately leading to more channel sales.

By Diane Krakora, CEO of PartnerPath

I have an Apple Watch. It was a surprise Christmas gift from my adorable husband a year and a half ago. While I love it for immediate notifications like text and Slack, the Activity tracking app confuses me. If you’re not up on this latest craze, each week the watch sets a daily Move goal for how much you should stand and exercise. I see my progress throughout the day and if I don’t hit my Move goal, the watch recommends a lower daily goal the next week. It feels like a reward for missing the goal. That’s not right. The same is true for partner goals. If a partner doesn’t reach the goals outlined for them by the vendor or program, do you lower their goals? Awe, you didn’t make it … here’s a lower bar for you. That’s no way to drive excellence.

By Diane Krakora, CEO of PartnerPath

Partner enablement is a tricky thing. Ostensibly, it’s a process designed to help partners be more self-sufficient and able to sell and support solutions to end-customers. In reality, it’s a measuring stick used by vendors to determine when their partners are ready to sell their technology, regardless of whether they actually are. Without a doubt, enablement is a critical process for both vendors and their partners – with the scope and process ever-changing.

By Diane Krakora, CEO of PartnerPath

In my last blog post I shared findings from some of the data presented in our January 2017 State of Partnering webinar and the factors contributing to the very slow progress of cloud for vendors. I used a seemingly slow football clock as an analogy for how long it can take for a play (cloud) to finish, and now I feel the analogy has even more layers. (Just ask the Boston Patriots how much can be accomplished in the final minutes of a game.) But there’s more than one side to the cloud conversation. Our State of Partnering study also revealed some interesting findings from solution providers who took the survey.

What did our webinar panelists have to say about the State of Partnering 2017 data?

By Diane Krakora, CEO of PartnerPath

They say hindsight is 20/20. That adage is never truer than when we analyze the results of our annual State of Partnering study and compare the responses to those of past years. Inevitably, certain trends emerge or certain assumptions are proven true (or false) that sometimes result in me sighing. Noticeably. It’s the audible sign that I have found data that’s not only surprising, but disappointing.

By Diane Krakora, CEO

I'll tell you now, this is not one of those blogs where I give tips and solutions to make your channel program awesome. Rather, this is what is sometimes called “channel therapy” – a.k.a. our twice-annual channel roundtable with channel executives. We share problems, listen with empathy to ever-growing challenges and give advice to each other. At the end of these sessions someone always comments, “So, we're all facing similar problems. That's good to know. No one has it figured out.” Indeed.