How Core Strategic Principles, Techniques and Processes Can Support You in Building a Partner Program

Unlike most people who land in partnership roles after many years in direct sales, my path has been slightly different. Even though I have held my fair share of commercially-focused roles, the majority of my experience has been shaped by the rigor and structure of project management and naturally, it influences the way I think about building partner programs as well. From time to time, I like to review the PMI wealth of resources, and see what kind of general program management best practices I can leverage in the context of partnerships. One of the?articles I came across recently provided an overview of core strategic principles, techniques and processes, and it peaked my desire to geek on the topic, and draw some parallels between the aforementioned and how they can be applied to inform a more strategic approach to building partner programs. Here is where the thought process took me, with a pinch of personal experience of course.?

MECE Principle (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive)?

This is one of the most foundational management consulting principles and in a nutshell, it ensures that information is categorized comprehensively and without an overlap. This principle can come in handy when we are just starting the partnership journey and everything needs to be built from scratch. I took a similar approach to build a System Integrators program. Taking the partner development lifecycle as a starting point, I mapped around it all program components, and the associated assets and processes that would need to be in place at each stage of maturity. Later, I developed individual execution plans for the initiatives defined as highest priority for the first quarter like finalizing contracts, working with the delivery team to build level 101 training content, etc. Each subsequent quarter, I would evaluate progress, add enhancement initiatives and tackle developing additional components as the program matures. This was all done in a very agile manner as you can probably imagine, by pulling items from a backlog each quarter and clearly defining objectives, success criteria and the necessary stakeholder involvement.??

80/20 Pareto Principle??

This is another well-known principle that states that 80% of the output is based on 20% of the input. In the context of partnerships, we can translate that into 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of the partners, and most partnerships professionals would likely relate to a close variation of those numbers. It’s wise to keep this principle in mind when we plan partner resources allocation. Partner Managers particularly can benefit from some data points around their best performing partners and structure their time accordingly. This principle can also be useful when we think about what type of partner programs to focus on first. Too often partnership programs try to cover it all – reseller, services, technology, you name it. Spreading your resources thin to make sure you are not missing out on potential opportunities might not be the most efficient use of time. A more strategic approach would be to start small and focus on the type of partners that will have the most impact based on the current business objectives and pain points, and structure your partnership team as a supportive overlay to the needs of the other departments. Otherwise, you can easily end up as an opportunistic, single-standing team that has to constantly fight for attention and justify its existence to leadership and the rest of the business.?

Value Stream Mapping??

By definition, this is a form of lean-management used to design and analyze the flow of information required to bring a product or service to a consumer. In the context of Partnership Programs, this technique is helpful when we look to create our internal processes, streamline operations and enhance productivity. Too often leaders don’t have enough visibility into their team’s daily work and try to solve capacity problems by asking for additional headcount. The end result is more people added to an already broken process, which inevitably leads to a bigger mess. A more strategic approach would be to get more clarity and visualize the various steps involved in the current processes. For me, that has been an easy way to identify the non-value-adding activities and focus the problem solving on eliminating those, which?in ceratin cases has eliminated the need for additional headcount altogether. Few addtional benefits I have managed to accomplished in that manner are: shorter time to value for customers, faster partner onboarding time, streamlined contract negotiation and administration for the sales team, etc. Once the process is refined, there is an opportunity to automate the?steps where it makes sense, and create further efficiencies.??

Change Management??

Change Management drives sustainable program and project outcomes by supporting individuals and teams to successfully go through organizational changes. It’s time-consuming, however essential to partner activation and to driving the desired behavior from both internal and external stakeholders. It involves clear and frequent multi-channel communication, training, monitoring, and conducting a series of reinforcement activities to ensure changes are adopted and sustained. Too often change initiatives are focused exclusively on the tools and processes, and even though PRMs, CRMs and the like are helpful, they will only work if introduced hand in hand with a robust people plan in mind. Partner Enablement teams do a fantastic job of creating content, planning and executing training sessions, but it often all stops here due to the pressure to move on to creating the next piece of training content. Through my work at Prosci, one of the thought leaders in the Change Management space, and personal application of best practices, I have found three things to be particularly helpful in engaging partners through changes – (1) staying on top of what is going on in the other departments and communicating early upcoming changes that could impact the partnership, (2) involving the partners in creating solutions and continuously seeking their feedback, (3) setting behavioral change metrics, prioritizing time to evaluate them and continuing to implement sustainment activities for as long as the desired outcomes are accomplished.??

These are just a few examples of how you can take a more strategic approach to building partner programs. There are certainly a lot more out there and I would love to hear from the partnership community on the topic. How have you applied those and other strategic principles, techniques and approaches to build your partner programs from scratch and scale them to the next level?of maturity???