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Take it to the next level, Focus on Individualized Enablement

06.01.16

Partner initiatives are replacing big programs.

10 Trends for a 2020 Vision – Uncover #8

If you haven't had a chance to read the full report yet, take a look at how individualized enablement will become a key priority for the future of the channel. The following is an excerpt from our 2016 State of Partnering report: 10 Trends for a 2020 Vision, using survey responses from over 100 vendors, 200 solution providers and years of industry data. Download the complete report here.

Not all partners need all the elements offered in partner programs

putting-partner-together.jpgWe’ve said this a few times: not all partners are the same. And as the market continues to evolve toward cloud solutions, additional different partners will emerge. In just the last ten years we’ve seen the decline of VARs, Catalogs and DMRs and the emergence of MSPs, cloud brokers, telcos and even digital marketing agencies as channels to end-customers. Increasingly, a larger variety of partners will surface, driven by different customer requirements.

The partners are differentiating themselves based on vertical markets, end-customer targets and services offered, and will need different and differentiated enablement from vendors. IDC predicted with the rise in spending shifts from IT to Line-of-Business (LoB) executives, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) will hold 10% of the overall technology budget by the end of 2015. Industry analyst group Gartner indicates that by 2017 the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO. Almost a fourth of solution provider respondents indicated more than half of their revenues are coming from line-of-business sales. Partners selling to line-of-business need different engagement and enablement from their vendor partners.

Programs that lump large numbers of partners into homogeneous levels – like gold, silver, platinum – are going away. Partners will engage in specific initiatives with vendors based on their business models, market, customers, capabilities and services.

If you look around the industry at vendor channel programs, you will notice we are already not able to fit partners neatly into three traditional program levels. In addition to the levels of the pyramid, there are a plethora of tracks – a referral partner track, a services track, consultants network, MSP track, cloud provider track – to name a few. Solution providers are participating in several ‘Programs’ for one vendor, leading to confusion and engagement complexity.

Partner enablement is aligning to partners’ business needs

The IT industry is headed towards micro-segments of partners. Think of these as microcosms of channel partners engaging with vendors in individualized initiatives based on the partner’s business model. Not all enablement will be needed for all partners – even at a platinum level. We see this today with companies like Cisco and Microsoft creating specializations or competency by market or technology, even for their top level partners. For example, Cisco has Master specializations that are independent of the program level. We will have more individualization as partner companies are enabled for marketing excellence, sales capacity, technical integrations, and/or customer support – depending upon their unique business model.

We clearly observed this trend through the ten years of data on partner enablement. A decade ago the focus was on technically preparing partners to be successful at installing and configuring the products and supporting those products in the customer environment. Remember the fanatical attention on CCIEs (Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts) across the entire partner ecosystem? Technical skills and post-sales professional service delivery now rank near the bottom of the vendors’ priorities for partner skill improvement. With, sadly, only business transformation skills listed below them.

time-to-profit.jpgThe enablement emphasis has shifted to the front end of the customer success lifecycle: positioning differentiation, selling to line-of-business decision makers and effective pre-sales discovery. Developing vertical market capabilities and executing effective marketing campaigns round out the top five priorities for vendors in enhancing solution provider skills.

Both solution providers and vendors agree, it should take less than a year for a solution provider to be profitable with a new vendor. Thus to shorten the partners’ time from being a rookie to becoming a rock star, vendors need to create enablement paths individualized to each of their channel partners based on that partner’s business model.


Watch our recorded discussion on individualized enablement in the webinar The Trend Toward Individualized Enablement and tell us what you think.

Topics: Channel Best Practices

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