In this year’s State of Partnering study, we asked partners the six primary elements affecting their experience with vendors. These elements sorted into six pillars, with program policies coming in fifth. Your policies have less effect on partner experience than you may think. As channel enthusiasts and experts, we get very excited about the details of partner programs. While these elements are not unimportant, but they’re mostly transparent to partners.
Topics: Channel Best Practices
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.
Topics: Channel Best Practices
05.24.17
We've talked about the first three pillars of partner experience, People, Enablement and Infrastructure. Now, using the responses from our annual State of Partnering study, we're closing on the final elements. Coming in fifth place is (drum roll) channel model.
Topics: Channel Best Practices
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.
Topics: Channel Best Practices
In this year’s State of Partnering study, we asked partners all about the elements affecting their experience with vendors. These elements sorted into six pillars, with partner infrastructure coming in third place. Partners were also asked to rank the importance of elements comprising infrastructure. The result: a virtual tie between simply ‘having a partner automation system’ and ‘having all the systems tied together with single sign-on (SSO).’ These are together at the top of the list because not only do partners expect automation solutions, they want them. These systems provide access to the tools, materials and people they need to be successful with your products.
Topics: Channel Best Practices
By Diane Krakora, CEO of PartnerPath
As made famous by Marshall Goldsmith, what got you here, won’t get you there. Meaning, what you did to be successful in channel partner recruitment over the last decade will not be successful in recruiting the next generation of cloud-savvy solution providers.
Topics: Featured, Channel Best Practices
04.05.17
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.
Topics: Channel Best Practices
Spring is here and so are mergers and acquisitions. This week, hosts Charlene O'Hanlon, channel industry editor & writer, and Diane Krakora, CEO of PartnerPath, talk about some recent M&A and what usually happens to channel programs when companies merge.
HPE, Palo Alto Networks and Verizon have all made recent acquisitions. Will they also acquire the channel programs? What typically happens to channel partners when a larger company buys a smaller company? What should partners be on the lookout for when their vendor is bought? Diane gives four points to work through if your company is being acquired. Let us know what you think.
Topics: videocast, Channel Best Practices
Spring travels are over and hosts Charlene O'Hanlon, channel industry editor & writer, and Diane Krakora, CEO of PartnerPath, are back to talk about Partner Enablement this week. Their 7-minute conversation touches on the ways partner enablement affects partner experience and how the whole idea of enablement has shifted.
Listen to see if you agree that vendors need to be more mindful of how they define enablement and let us know how many partners you think a PAM should handle. Enablement covers a lot of ground and Charlene and Diane love to talk about this important element. Tell us what you think below.
Topics: videocast, Channel Best Practices
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.
Topics: Channel Best Practices
