Partnerships NOW: Volume 3

Welcome to the 3rd volume of Partnerships NOW newsletter! We're excited to bring you another edition that highlights the latest strategies and insights on partnership effectiveness. As you may already know, our goal is to provide you with best practices and practical advice for improving your partnerships and collaborations.

In this issue, we're putting the spotlight on key areas that can help move the needle in partnership effectiveness, including onboarding and training, incentives, engagement, and collaboration. These are critical components that can make or break any partnership, and we're thrilled to share our expert perspectives on how to excel in these areas.

Whether you're a seasoned partnership professional or just starting out, we hope this newsletter will provide you with valuable insights and ideas to help you take your partnerships to the next level. So, sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy this latest edition of Partnerships NOW newsletter.

Partner onboarding and ongoing training is critical to successful co-selling and co-marketing. What are 1-3 best practices you believe teams need to do in order to enable their partners through their lifecycle?

"Here are top three approaches we’ve found to build effective partnerships:

1. Clear Communication and Expectations Based on Mutual Goals - A company should provide clear expectations, goals, and targets to the partner that are tailored to the relationship the partner has with the company.  

• For strategic partners, the foundation is the development of joint business plans focused on the mutual success of the partnership and transparent, clear key results that can be monitored and used to fine-tune the plan based on the actual results. A business plan should not be treated as a checkbox item for a program but a living document that fosters the relationship and grows the mutual business.
• For all other partners, it is important to understand enough about the partner organization to tailor communications that are relevant to them and provide tools, training and guidance based on what other partners like them might be employing to grow the business. 

2. Foster a Collaborative Culture with your Partners within the Ecosystem - A collaborative culture is critical and can be achieved in a couple of key ways:

• Transparency Through Data: Data helps the partner understand their business with a company. Ideally, this gives them pointers on business growth areas and enables them to find other trusted partners who can help them in areas where they are deficient. This allows partners to take advantage of business opportunities and the full ecosystem fostering a culture of trust and joint problem-solving. 
• Ongoing Support and Feedback: Partnerships are still all about relationships. Regular check-ins with partners enables collaborative feedback, ability to address any concerns or questions promptly, and fosters ideas on how to improve the business opportunity.

3. Training and Enablement Programs: Partners want to make sure they are knowledgeable and can deliver what their customers need. It should be designed to be easy to follow and consumable so that it is timely and relevant for the partner’s immediate use case.

These three approaches done well will foster strong partnerships, leading to successful business growth." - Gina Batali-Brooks, Is Inspired

"One of the most successful onboarding programs we have managed had a dedicated onboarding team at the heart of its operations. This team did nothing but onboard partners and had a blend of skills within sales, technical, and operations. Dedicating personnel to onboarding means a depth of experience for new partners and even if it's one person they act as a guide to other areas of the vendor company. Far too often we have seen onboarding being an 'add-on' task to another day job, we advocate avoiding this approach at all costs." - Tom Perry, Sherpa

How can teams keep open lines of communication with partners? What strategies and/or communication tools have you tested + proven and/or tested + failed? 

"Establishing a plan for communication frequency with partners is critical for having a consistent foundation of partnership collaboration. Some examples of strategies can include:

Agreement as to the frequency of engagement bases on strategic and tactical conversations that need to occur across stakeholders. Setting the expectations that factor fiscal years of partners, the people that need to be involved and the content that will be shared will set a foundation for success.

Knowing the process of how to escalate issues is critical to ensure both sides of the partnership understand when and how to handle challenges that may arise in a partnership.

The check-ins can occur in a variety of ways including in-person and using productivity tools that best align between partners. Examples of productivity tools can include Microsoft Teams. A private Teams channel can be used to exchange thoughts and ideas as well as relevant documents. When needed, an online Teams meeting can be setup to pull stakeholders from around the world to have a real-time discussion and conversation." - Brian Galicia, Microsoft

Incentives can be effective when used strategically and when partners are knowledgeable about them. Do you have any examples of hard working incentive programs and the results they delivered?  

"Incentive campaigns can be a double-edged sword. They can either be a resounding success or a complete failure. However, I believe that incentives work best when they properly motivate your partners, not when you are just trying to push a product or solution. To ensure your incentive campaign is successful, it's vital to do your homework or purchase an incentive platform that does it for you. Analyze your partner data including regions, product SKUs, and partner types (i.e., those with particular specializations), to determine what types of incentives have worked in the past. Use recent sales analytics to test a few scenarios to see if your campaign is a true win-win for both you and your partners. Moreover, it's essential to time the launch of your incentives with a full marketing campaign and sales offer enablement content. This way, you can ensure that your partners are aware of the incentives and have the necessary resources to promote and sell your products or solutions effectively." - Kristine Stewart, The Lexington Group

"Sherpa has managed numerous inventive programs over the past 2 years. The most successful ones place the individual, not the partner company at the heart of the program. By creating incentives at a personal level you actually influence behavior in a positive way and can target communications to support incentives properly." - Tom Perry, Sherpa

With sales, indirect or direct, we know metrics matter. What metrics are important to measure across partner programs at a high level? Which are most significant from the executive point of view?

"Partner program metrics must be aligned and varied based on the program goals and the partner selling motion. Spur focuses on 6 key metric areas when evaluating partner success within a program: Contribution, Capability, Coverage, Commitment, Consumption, & Credibility. To understand your partner ecosystem you must have a strong scoring model and this framework provides the flexibility to measure partners regardless of their sales motion. In addition, you will need to focus in on the elements that align with the program outcomes you are looking to drive.

Contribution aligns with the revenue the partner is generating and their sales velocity. This is one of the most important metrics for any sales-based program, as it directly reflects the success of the program in generating new business. Other contribution considerations can be customer acquisition costs, and partner contribution margin.

Capability measures the partner’s skill level against your products and services. Training and enablement programs aid in measuring capability. It could be focused on effectiveness in a specific vertical market or product offering.

Coverage assesses partner reach across the customer base and total addressable market (TAM) along with partner wins by customer segment. It can also measure the regional exposure and presence of a partner.

Commitment is looking at the partner’s competitive alignment with the product or service. Are you the only vendor in the category on their line card? Are they investing in services around your offering? This is a good place to measure partner engagement across the program and alignment with driving growth in target areas. Business planning can be a tool for measuring and understanding a partners level of commitment.

Consumption looks at customer retention and lifetime value. This is also where companies will measure partner’s ARR growth and renewal rates which is becoming a key element in modern programs.

Credibility focuses in on the customer and their satisfaction with the partners they are working with. Things like customer satisfaction surveys can provide insight into how well partners are doing with your customers.

A strong scoring model is necessary to understand the partner ecosystem, and the framework outlined offers flexibility to measure partners regardless of their sales motion. The metrics should be focused on the program outcomes that are being targeted. Contribution, Capability, Coverage, Commitment, Consumption, and Credibility represent different aspects of partner success and when built out will allow you to articulate partner value regardless of sales motion." - Raegan Wilson, MBA, Spur Reply

"Metrics of success will depend on the type of partnership between the two companies. Executives between both companies should have strategic alignment on what should be measured, the frequency of measurement and what determines success (Green, Yellow or Red). Here are a few sales metrics to consider as a starting point.

Pipeline: How many leads are being generated and from whom (which partner/s)? What is the deal velocity and how quickly are leads going through the sales funnel from sales stage to sales stage?

Revenue: How many deals have progressed through the pipeline to won/closed from whom (which partner/s)? If multiple products are involved, what product/services are selling?

With both pipeline and revenue: segmentation is critical to see the details. Inbound to a partner/outbound to a partner. Where are the leads coming from (selling region, selling segment, selling source)?

These are just a few of the key selling metrics that every partner program should consider when measuring the sales performance of your partner program." - Brian Galicia, Microsoft

How do we know our partners are engaged? What actions should teams take to gauge or measure partner engagement that are scalable?

"Assessing engagement is a key task for any Partner team. Sherpa's Partner Assessment platform does exactly this. We analyse engagement with 19 Partner Program attributes and scores partners’ engagement with each. This process identifies whitespace in partner communities, guides enablement programs, and ensures partner engagement can be managed and ultimately measured." - Tom Perry, Sherpa