ing them similar to a website property. Partners are already familiar with your brand and product line, so ditch the hero banners and product info pages that belong on your retail site. Instead of the traditional focus on marketing and consumer-targeted content to entertain, partners are choosing portals that offer value — more like a business enablement application that provides dashboards and performance data. Partner interfaces should give a “singlepane-of-glass” view of the partner channel regarding leads, program status, MDF allocations and training requirements. Partners want transparency to understand the status of the relationship with the vendor, what they owe and most importantly, what the vendor owes. Real-time performance data allows partners to act quickly and put an end to surprises at the end of the quarter— similar to checking your grades online in real-time instead of being surprised at the parent-teacher conference at the end of the semester. With a world-class partner experience, everyone wins; the vendor gets visibility, and the partner gets tools and capabilities that they may not otherwise. 3. Integrate or die A significant component of the current digital transformation is operational efficiency across organizations. This includes the partner channel. Playing nice with other critical business systems such as CRMs, ERPs, marketing technology, etc. is not a nice-to-have. It’s a requirement. Partners must interact with almost every aspect of a business in the same way direct sales does — they have to work with content, be trained and work with revenue and pipeline information. But partners don’t have access to platforms and systems associated with those departments. This presents a challenge on the back end, making visibility into what’s happening day to day difficult with all of the data chopped up in four or five different systems downstream. A composite report is essential for a partner and vendor to understand what’s working and what’s not. This requires seamless integrations where systems play well together. One of the biggest impediments to providing a world-class partner experience is that the channel almost always comes as a secondary endeavor to direct sales. The nature of a business starts with building a product and then growing it with direct sales. Then the company needs to scale, which is when the channel comes into the equation. By virtue of that process, when companies create a partner experience, it almost always requires the meshing of several incumbent systems. A world-class partner experience will plug into the existing infrastructure without demanding change in the organization and how it operates. This is a differentiator between you and the competition – a full portal integration that is easy to manage without being beholden to the vendor, a systems integrator or internal IT teams to operate it. 4. Meet the end customers’ heightened expectations The needs and expectations of the end customer are heightened due to creative and competitive digital marketing. For a channel leader to set up partners for success, they need an elevated, customer-focused marketing approach that can extend to their partners. Marketing must be cutting-edge, consistent and highly targeted. It’s time for the intelligence and automation of digital and social marketing to be amplified through the partner program. The technology exists — whether or not partners will leverage it will determine their success in the new age of partner marketing. The partner interface must also be in line with the elevated online experiences that customers see everywhere. This creates a familiarity that partners want. You want partners to recognize your system because they have used others’. Differentiate on finer points to demonstrate that your interface is superior. Today, partners are vendor-fluid — building businesses around many brands. When they have to learn a completely different system and navigate a new vendor partner interface, it is a barrier to adopting that solution. If all brands use best practices and share similar systems, there’s a familiarity, making it simple to sell your product without training. Best practices equal ease for partners. o Gary Sabin is the vice president of product management at Impartner. Other Lack of buy-in from leadership Misaligned Strategies Enablement Homegrown technology Not having software or automation Variety of third-party tools that make up a combined tech stack Execution of Strategy Misaligned Incentives What is your organization’s annual revenue? What are the biggest hurdles channel leaders face when setting up an effective partner journey? Source: Impartner; The Spur Group Managed Services Revenue by the Numbers Sourc : Datto’s Global State of MSP, 2020 Americas APAC EMEA 25% 18% 14% 7% 7% 7% 4% 18% Hurdles 0% 0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% Less than $200k $200 to $499k $500 to $999k $1m to $2.49M $2.5M to $4.9M $5M to $7.49M $7.5 to $9.9M $10 to $19.9M 32 CHANNELV ISION | JULY - AUGUST 2022
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