SHOW ME YOU KNOW ME – The art of personalised partner experience

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Differentiation through personalisation is the new normal.

If you can't personalise your partner experience the outcome is inevitable - you risk becoming just a commodity.

Brendan Wichter, vice president and principal analyst for digital business strategy at Forrester, said it best -

“We had an evolution happen where we moved from customisation to personalisation through segmentation, [but] this new era of personalisation now is all about individualisation.

It's now - 'what kind of relevant, real-time, value-added experiences can you provide me on my path to making that decision?'”

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Partners are now not only demanding personalised experiences from their programs - they need you to anticipate them as well.

And the tools and data required to find out enough detail to make a warm, genuine and credible approach to our partners and their business are all there - we just have to make it a habit of integrating it into our workflows.

A great example of this is the quiet shift in businesses prioritising personalised branding of their employees over company branding.

The increase in prospects and partners wanting to put a face to a product or service, and to find out more about that face, is becoming demand-gen central.

Partners want to know about the people behind the initiative.

They want us to meet them where they are.

They want a relationship as a first responder in their lifecycle touchpoint, not a company masquerading as a value-giver simply to make a quick buck.

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So how can we integrate ‘show me you know me’ into our partner best-practice, and what do we need to know to make it work?

?? Personalisation is in the eye of the beholder

As Wichter puts it: “It’s only personalisation when you get it right, and that is determined by the receiver.” Program loyalty can be a genuine force-multiplier and differentiator. Orchestrate the experience for the partner, but not in an invasive way.

?? It's a two-way conversation with partners

It's not how can you help me or I you, it's how can we help increase each other’s luck surface area. We are slowly moving away from recommendation to advice because they are actually two different things. This kind of expertise can be a program differentiator.

?? Partners want to control their journey

Help partners create their own journey. Partners will want to engage with your program if you recognise and remember them. You need to understand what drives partners to act by moving beyond prediction to anticipation.

?? Connect, don't pitch

Elevator pitches don't work, and the dreaded connect-and-pitch even less so. Increasing you programs sphere of awareness is step one, showing you know a potential partner that you know them is a process, not a pitch.

?? Stay human

We all like to feel someone understands us and our situation. Feeling known and understood can be a tangible program driver. In the middle of processes, procedures and partners stand people, and they will always be at the centre of the partner experience.

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According to McKinsey, currently only 8% of businesses use a personalised approach to promoting their organisations, services, products, or programs.

We are entering the age of the ‘who’ economy.

This means that the needs of partners are continuing to refine, so competition to attract potential IPP opportunities is only going to increase.

To stand out from your competition, you really must know who you're speaking to before/during/after you meet using both data and understanding.

I call this approach - H2H-gen (human-to-human)

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So, it makes this an art and a science.

A science because a lot of this decision-making and preferred outcomes can be gathered through existing tech and data systems.

It’s an art because it’s about creating then crafting a contextualised, value-led experience that resonates on an individual level using genuine interpersonal engagement.

Does this approach take more effort to execute effectively than traditional blast-outreach or at an at-scale approach?

Sure - but it also yields higher value ROI, both personally and professionally.

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But beware.

The biggest trap I see others fall into when initiating this initiative is they quickly revert and choose to merge in with the personalisation-at-scale crowd to try and circumvent and iterate artificially.

Then they’re back to square-one in a hot minute, and people can tell.?

You must show me you know me.

Not as a group but as an individual.

You must speak to me, not we.

Create us.

KYP - know your partner.