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Is the juice worth the squeeze?

04.17.24

Putting in the work on PRM tools pays off.

Your PRM, known as the Partner Portal to your partners, should hold all the sales tools, automated processes, and enablement necessary to help partners sell your joint value proposition (and deliver on it). That’s easy to write, but in reality, it’s more complex. Anyone who has been through the experience of solution evaluation, implementation, change management and ensuring post-launch success has at some point asked themselves whether “the juice is worth the squeeze.”

Topics: Partnering Tips, PRM

What is Comp Neutrality and why does it matter?

04.04.24

Deciding how to tackle sales compensation is no easy task.

A participant in our recent partnering executive roundtable asked the group: “Are you in favor of or opposed to creating compensation neutrality for your direct field team?” Without missing a beat (and to my surprise), almost half of the roundtable participants said they were against ‘comp’ neutrality. How could anyone be against something with the word “neutral” in it? If you’re not familiar with the term, compensation neutrality means a salesperson gets paid, or their sales quota is retired, at the same rate if the product is sold by a partner or themselves. How compensation is defined for your direct sales force can help or hinder your partnering efforts and there’s no clear consensus on the right answer.

Topics: Partnering Tips, Industry Perspective

Check It Before You Wreck It

03.20.24

Overcome 5 Roadblocks of Partner Digital Experience

At the 2024 Impartner customer event Multiply, we assessed the PRM/partner portal of attendees in a service called ‘Check your PDX’. My co-worker and I conducted these checks in tandem, back-to-back, in 30-minute segments for six straight hours. It was interesting to see the wide landscape of different partner-facing systems but by the end the meagre snacks and prolonged period in front of the screens had us running for the poolside to talk through our findings. One thing that became obvious was how many vendors face the same PDX roadblocks. From lack of focus to partner program alignment, navigating these roadblocks is essential for optimising collaboration and driving mutual growth.

Topics: Partnering Tips, PRM

10 Mistakes to Avoid in Your Partner Program

12.13.23

Here's a checklist of 10 mistakes we see people make in designing and running a partner program. For context, details, possible fixes and some friendly banter, watch the video here.

Topics: Partnering Tips

3 Insights for Better Partner Engagement

11.15.23

One solution provider shares actions to take (or avoid) in your partner relationship.

We’ve been beating the drum about the importance of partner experience for a while now (if this is the first you’re hearing of it, grab a cup of coffee and start here). Every step along the partner journey is critical. The experience must be good to attract new partners. The experience must be good to win over and onboard new partners. And the experience must be good to engage and grow your partners.

Topics: Partnering Tips

A Partner Portal is Not a Silver Bullet

10.18.23

Follow 5 principles for a PRM that improves partner experience

The new generation of partners are digital-first. They want to self-serve partnership information online – not pick up a phone and make a call (do phones still do that?) to then be emailed a fuzzy scanned PDF (which is probably out of date). From onboarding and enablement processes to opportunity registration and marketing, all partner information should be easily accessed from your partner portal/PRM (Partner Relationship Management) solution. However, a basic implementation of a PRM (where you throw every document you have every created online behind a gated login) isn’t going to cut it anymore. Purchasing and deploying a partner portal is not enough to drive success with your partners. An effective partner portal follows the same design principles as the partner program and the user experience should be designed for maximum partner engagement.

Topics: Featured, Partnering Tips, PRM

3 Tips to Organize Your PRM

10.04.23

Provide a better partner experience by showing some TLC to your PRM system.

You would be shocked to know the variety of partner portal and PRM systems I’ve worked on, but one thing remains the same: the need for organization. There are many components to a PRM system: the back end, the front-end, the bi-directional sync to multiple other systems. On top of that, there are different individuals, business units and management levels that must come together to ensure a well-updated, easy-to-use, one stop place for partner engagement. Maintaining a successful PRM system may feel like a moving target, but with some organization, you can be a hero to partners and give them a good experience. Here are my top 3 tips for a successful PRM:

Topics: Partnering Tips

Give Partners the Tools to Drive Demand

09.20.23

3 Steps to help partners expand your marketing reach.

In our last annual webinar discussion between Diane Krakora and Jay McBain, Diane quoted desperate vendors as saying: “We don't care about a partner program; we just need them to generate leads. We don't care about customer success; we just need them to generate leads.” That’s short-sighted. Partners need a good partner program and a path to success with your products/services before they’re just going to hand over a giant bag of leads. They’re looking to grow their business and they’re doing that by building solutions for customers that involve your products along with other vendors and their own services. If you want to be a part of this equation, and want partners to develop leads for your products, facilitate your partners’ growth by offering them easy marketing solutions that takes some of the burden of demand generation off their plate.

Topics: Partnering Tips

Starting Off On the Right Foot

09.06.23

Three takeaways from my discussion with a solution provider.

Webinars are not just a great chance for us to provide our audience with great content, but they can be a chance for me to catch up with channel friends. Recently, I had an insightful conversation with Dominic Grillo, President of Atrion Communications (now part of Aurora) about how his organization decides to bring on a new vendor and the rough patches of getting started. He brought 30 years of experience to our chat and I found much of the conversation helpful for vendors looking to successfully launch a new solution provider. Three things really stood out:

Topics: Partnering Tips, Industry Perspective

Math, Physics & Chemistry

07.26.23

Get busy crafting compelling answers to these partner questions.

By now you all know I love data. I love that facts and figures give us insights and trends to change what we’re doing to be better. But you might not know I’m also a math and science geek. An original STEM girl. And that’s why when Anu Bulusu, my guest on April’s webinar, combined data and math and the importance of the partner experience, I knew I found a kindred spirit. She’s a straight-shooting smarty pants founder of not one, but two, very successful multi-regional solution providers.

Topics: Partnering Tips, Industry Perspective