How can you develop a partner segmentation strategy that maximizes ROI?

1 Step 1: Define your partner segmentation criteria

When segmenting your partners, the first step is to define criteria that reflect your business goals, partner needs, and market conditions. Common criteria include partner type (e.g. supplier, distributor, customer, or competitor), value (current and potential contribution to revenue, profit, market share or innovation), performance (quality and consistency of delivery, service or collaboration), loyalty (degree of trust, commitment and satisfaction) and fit (alignment of vision, values, culture and capabilities).

2 Step 2: Collect and analyze your partner data

The second step is to collect and analyze data to measure and compare your partners according to your segmentation criteria. You can use partner surveys to rate or rank yourselves or your partners on various aspects of the partnership. Additionally, you can gather feedback from your partners through interviews, reviews, testimonials, or referrals. Partner metrics such as sales, revenue, retention, referrals, or satisfaction are also important indicators of their value, performance, loyalty, or fit. Lastly, creating or updating partner profiles that include their background, goals, needs, preferences, and behaviors will help you better understand them.

3 Step 3: Create your partner segments and personas

The third step is to create your partner segments and personas based on the data that you collected and analyzed. To do this, you can employ methods such as cluster analysis, Pareto analysis, SWOT analysis, or scorecard analysis. Cluster analysis groups your partners based on their similarities and differences on multiple criteria, while Pareto analysis helps you identify the 20% of your partners that account for 80% of your value or results. SWOT analysis is a strategic framework to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of each partner, and scorecard analysis assigns scores or grades to each partner based on their performance or potential on each criterion. Once you have created your partner segments, you can also create partner personas to represent the typical characteristics, needs, and motivations of each segment. This can help you understand and empathize with your partners better and communicate with them more effectively.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?