Data, data, data! Who doesn’t love data? No doubt you’d enjoy program benchmarking information as you go into 2018 planning, so here are a few highlights from the 104 vendor respondents in our 2017 State of Partnering. Surprisingly, more vendor respondents offered co-marketing funds than deal registration.
For Deal Registration:
- 51% of respondents approve a single partner per deal (which means 49% might approve 2+ partners per deal, yikes).
- 30% had minimum deal size requirements for registration.
- 20% allow the registration of a services opportunity (this is a great practice to start if you’re not including services in your deal registration).
- Just over 25% of the vendor respondents did not offer deal registration.
For co-marketing programs:
- 60% of respondents provided funds for initiative- or request-based marketing (MDF).
- 30% accrued funds to partners based on sales volume (traditionally called co-op).
- 41% required a marketing plan to access funds.
- 46% required proof of performance for reimbursement.
- Just under 20% of the vendor respondents did not offer co-op or MDF.
Due to the complexity and variety of products sold by partners, their business models, vertical industry focus, services capabilities and geographic reach, we can rarely reliably aggregate partner margin data, but we did ask the vendor for their program compensation ranges.
- Reselling discounts were diverse across the vendor respondents with the average in the 16-20% range. We’ve seen this resale discount decrease over the past several years so vendors could incorporate incentives for deal registration, marketing and customer success.
- Deal registration and agent fees averaged in the 6-10% range. This is an increase for agent fees that have traditionally averaged in the less than 5% range.
- MDF and rebates averaged lower, in the less than 5% range.
The vendors also reported deal registration and MDF program percentages were expecting to increase in 2017.
Want more on ways automation can affect the partner experience? Take a look at the complete report and let us know what you think.
