Channel Partner Success: My Experience

"How do we get more customers from this partnership?"

"Where is the revenue?"

"WE NEED MORE CO-BRANDED WEBINARS!"

These are all complaints I hear everyday from very reputable channel partners. But not all partnership opportunities are a success, why? The past year has been eye opening for me as I transitioned from an executive in the HRO arena to working with a supplier of technology to the same space, PrismHR. PrismHR's mission is to power America's small businesses, today we serve more than 350 HRO providers, which serve 88,000 small businesses, and those businesses pay more than two million employees every month! This new opportunity has given me a chance to dive deep into partnerships and find ways to make them more successful. Partnership opportunities are key to our business, because we cannot be all things to all people, but we can aggregate products and services, providing better buying power and more importantly unique experiences to our customers and ultimately the small businesses they serve. Our customers, the PEO's, HRO's and payroll companies are attempting to do the same, we want to energize that growth the best we can within our marketplace.

Every new partnership has the potential to be wildly successful or a miserable failure from the onset. Though most sit at the middle 65% of the curve, having some success, and not on the tail. Finding those successful partnerships can be tough, but I have learned a few things along the way (I'm a quick study.....sometimes) and thought I would share them. I have used these as a mental checklist, and you may want to consider these as you delve deeper into partnerships that drive your own business.

Shared Values

This seems like a no-brainer, but it's not. This is so easy to overlook. While vetting new partnerships, I have learned it's incredibly important to understand how a channel partner views and treats customers. Misalignment leads to missed service level agreements, and ultimately the customer feels the pain and will share a negative view of both companies. Does the channel partner put customers before profits? Does the partner's sense of urgency align with your own? Are both parties transparent in business dealings? Relationship building between decision makers makes sense (cents?), and those cents can lead to dollars, customer satisfaction, and tremendous value up and down the chain when built properly. Getting to the heart of this might slow down a contracting process, but partnering with the wrong company will have a much longer impact.

1+1=3

Partnerships where both bring something to the table, creating a 1+1=3 scenario is critical to success. In my experience, some companies want access to a marketing engine when there is no meaningful "togetherness" in our products. This equates to a celebrity pushing a product they might not use (Do you really see Matthew Mcconaughey driving a Buick?). But when your product plus the partner's product bring real value to the end user, it's a home run. The customer benefits, both brands benefit, and it's a win-win-win.

Skin in the game

It's critically important that both parties have "skin in the game." A vested interest by both parties keeps everyone engaged in the mutual success of the product or service, and keeps the customer at the center of the conversation with a sense of urgency. A 1+1=3 mentality coupled with skin in the game creates an environment where everyone is aligned and motivated to make the partnership work for all. Many times skin in the game is revenue related, but it must be deeper than that. Relationships are important here, reputation, money, and exceeding customer expectations are all on the line. From a contracting perspective, all must be considered when entering the partnership.

Concentrated (Curated) bets

Some companies have opened up their ecosystem and let anyone develop integrations. This bothers me on a number of levels. While I am a fan of casting a broad net, I find it shortsighted when you might not be in control of your own destiny. When I review new channel partnerships, I am curious of the net they are casting. Do they have skin in the game with me, or are they casting a wide net to many competitors? Can we concentrate our efforts and bet on each other? Are both of us best-in-class partners that might create a unique experience together. How many similar companies have each of us partnered with? For instance, last year we partnered with Kurense to integrate a paycard solution into PrismHR. To date, Kurense is the only pay card option in our ecosystem. We bet on each other for a superior customer experience. Work with a company until the partnership doesn't make sense any longer, then it's good to move on.

Finally........

The past year has taught me how to create great partnerships, but I have not been successful in all of them either, and it continues to be a learning process as we adapt our platform to bring in curated best in class companies to fill out expertise and functionality not available through PrismHR today. We are always on the hunt for great partners, and if you are a PEO, ASO, or HR outsourcing provider looking for a flexible platform, ways to monetize great products, and a better experience, call us.

Check us out at PrismHR.com, and our marketplace page here for more information about us. If you have other ideas on what makes partnerships succeed or fail, please leave a comment or email me at [email protected].