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What mistakes are vendors making with their partner ecosystem?

A major data point driving home MAKE FEWER MISTAKES is the list of open-responses from partners* detailing mistakes vendors make as they are engaging a solution provider organization. Direct from partners, the submissions center around three themes again this year:

The primary goal of vendors focused on recruiting and onboarding partners is to identify and engage new types of partners. These are organizations that aren’t traditional IT solution providers and yet have influence in cloud-based technology solution purchases. Jay McBain of Forrester calls them shadow channels as they aren’t engaging with customers or vendors in the traditional way. We at PartnerPath take a bit more positive nomenclature and call them next-generation channels.

The Roles of Enablement, Spending and Distribution in a Cloud Sales World

Does enablement ever end?

Enablement is a key tenet to partner success. Both the vendors* and the solution providers* want to invest in enablement. The better trained a partner is the more they design effective solutions to customer needs, produce differentiated marketing campaigns, accurately position the products and troubleshoot issues. Enablement is really a win-win for all sides – vendor, partner and customer.

To capitalize on the growing cloud market and drive solution providers to resell cloud solutions, leading vendors are investing heavily in empowering their current partner ecosystem and finding new cloud-focused partners.

What are the vendors’ key priorities?

The vendor respondents’* top priority for growing and managing their partner ecosystems is to recruit and onboard new partners. Of the vendors eager to recruit, over 50% of them are looking for born-in-the-cloud solution providers and on average, they’re hoping to recruit and onboard about fifty of these partners in 2019. Systems Integrators and Managed Service Providers also top the list of the types of partners prioritized to recruitment and onboarding in 2019.

How have the solution provider sales changed?

The vendors* changing the role they expect partners play in cloud offerings aligns with the solution providers’ indication of their changing sales. 60% of respondents indicated they’re generating more than a quarter of their sales from activities they weren’t engaged in 24 months ago. That’s nearly double the number from the 2015 report. And 75% of the solution providers indicated this would increase in the coming years. Not surprisingly, more than 40% of the solution providers indicated those new sales activities were focused on the high gross margin managed service offerings.