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Many times I’ve come across the beginnings of a partner business that lacks the discipline to really take off. How do you take a fledgling partner business from a bumpy dirt road into a high capacity freeway? Darren Bibby, CEO and Founder of AlignedPartner, shares the five top things you can do to scale your partner business to maximize growth and value add from your partnerships.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Here are Five Things That Will Make the Difference to Scale Your Partner Business
- “Programatize” Everything. You need to transition from one-off agreements and discretionary discounts to a formalized partner program and consistent rules of engaging partners of different types.
- Document Everything. Put all your legal terms and conditions into a standard partner agreement and all your program benefits and requirements into a partner program guide for your external partners. Create field guides and rules of engagement for your internal teams.
- Build Partner Support Teams. Whether they sit in the partner organization or distributed within other departments, partners need people who provide sales, technical, and marketing support. One lower-cost way is to build an offshore channel operations and program support team that can do all of the back-office work like cleaning up partner data records, checking data quality, and making sure the portal is working as expected.
- Harmonize with Direct Sales. Getting your sales team working with your partners can be the most challenging item, but also the most rewarding. Make it as easy as possible to work with partners and lower the barriers. Provide comp neutrality so the reps can earn the same amount whether they work with a partner or not, both for sales and services.
- Automate your Systems and Processes. Much of the daily administrative work can be automated through an ever growing number of channel technologies including a partner portal, partner performance dashboards, and account mapping tools.
LINKS & RESOURCES
- Connect with Darren on LinkedIn
- Learn about the Murph Challenge
- Hear How to Build an Ecosystem Partner Program
