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Your gut probably tells you that partners amplify the customer experience, but you’ve lacked the data to prove it. Now I have the data you’ve been looking for and some tips on how you can drive customer success.
In this episode, Nancy Ridge and Norma Watenpaugh share the findings of their groundbreaking research on Partner Experience. They are the authors of an eBook titled Partners are the Customer Experience, brought to you by the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, also know as ASAP.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Here are just some of the key findings of their research:
- The Ecosystem Experience. It’s more than just partner experience. It’s about ecosystem experience. Different partners touch customers at every point of the customer journey. And the end of the day, the product you’re offering is a business outcome. And many times you need other partners to complete the solution, and a systems integrator to pull them all together.
- Hidden Influence. There’s a lot of unseen influence taking place. 87% of customers would say the partner identified the opportunity, but only 60% of the opportunities are transacted by the partner. Attribution of influence partners continues to be a massive challenge, both for the C-Suite who don’t see the influence and the sales reps who don’t always want that attribution to be recognized.
- The Ecosystem Orchestrator Advantage. Partners who take a more holistic ecosystem orchestrator role, orchestrating the value proposition around the customer and the business case, have an advantage over a narrowly defined vendor or partner providing a single product.
- Customers Say Partner Enablement is King. Partner enablement is the number one thing customers want vendors to be providing to their partners, highlighting their view of the importance of partner success. Customers realize better business outcomes with partners, especially when they have expertise and specialization in the customer’s industry.
- Partners Are the Customer Experience. With the transition to the subscription-based world, customer success is everything for retention. Partner success is customer success is vendor success. All three go hand in hand. Benefits of the partner ecosystem approach include increased deal size, higher close rates, higher retention, and stronger customer lifetime value
LINKS & RESOURCES
- Connect with Nancy and Norma on LinkedIn
- Get your copy of Partners Are the Customer Experience
- Learn how to gain Capital Efficient Growth with Partnerships
- Hear How Customer Experience Drives Partner Success
- Try Impartner Partner Management
