Partner channel sales & marketing tips

For small B2B services companies

Partner channels can be great when they work, frustrating when they don’t.

There are a couple main reasons you may want to associate with a partner company:

  1. Sales-ready leads
  2. Credibility with your customer base

In this article we’ll focus on the sales-ready leads motivator.

On the plus side, if things go well, the partner company can provide you a steady stream (or at least a trickle) of sales-ready leads. On the negative side, they might influence your behavior in ways that you may not be excited about.

To make sure we’re on a similar page (or at least reading the same book): a partner channel is a type of sales channel where the corresponding partner company generally has these characteristics:

  1. Sells a product that solves a known and important market problem, but doesn’t usually provide a complete solution on its own.
  2. Has some boxes for you to check / hoops for you to jump through in order to be welcomed into their partner ecosystem.
  3. Is usually significantly larger than you. It doesn’t have to be, but it often is.

One of the most important aspects for this relationship to work is that the partner company relies on companies like yours to fully solve their customer’s problems. In addition, you want there to be slightly more demand for partners than supply.

If the partner company doesn’t strongly rely on you (at least in well-defined scenarios), or they don’t want to have to rely on you, that’s a caution flag for the validity of this channel.

Some tips when you’re trying sell through a partner channel:

Figure out what motivates them to provide you leads

What’s their main criteria for passing a lead over to you?

  1. Is there a specific skillset / competency that you have?
  2. Certain industries you play in?
  3. Is it based on personal relationships you have?
  4. Your geography?
  5. Specific past performance?
  6. Your overall reputation?

You need to know what matters most to the partner company so that you can position yourself accordingly.

Figure out what their process is for routing leads and align with it

Depending on the maturity of the partner’s partner program, this process may feel more like chaos than a process, but in either case, you need to know how things work to understand where, and how, to inject yourself into the process.

Make sure to keep tabs on this over time, as it’ll likely change.

Figure out who else (by name(s)) you need to build a relationship with and start building

Obviously you want a relationship with the person that’s been assigned to your company.

You also need relationships with the people that can more directly see the value you have to offer if they either:

  1. Have direct access to the customer or
  2. Are a strong influencer of which of their customers gets paired with which partners.

Determine where you stand in the partner ecosystem

At one end of the spectrum you’re essentially a commodity in their eyes… at the other end you’re a snowflake. You’re probably neither extreme, but it’s important to understand how close you are to either end. Find out the answers to these questions:

  1. Does the partner consider you more of a commodity, or are you on a very short list of companies? Is their perception reasonable? If not, what are you going to do to change it?
  2. Are you a commodity for some scenarios, but not others? Which? Why?
  3. How many other companies are they trying to bring in that are essentially look-alikes from the partner’s perspective?

Use this information to differentiate yourself within the partner channel. Remember, they don’t need to remember all the things you can do, just the things that matter most to them.

Figure out if the partner needs any new content

You’ve got your existing website content of course. Do they need additional content framed in a different way than you already have on your website?

This might be content that helps the partner sell you internally, or content that they may want to share with their customer as validation before pulling you in.

Content might include:

  • specific partner-focused landing pages,
  • an application-focused landing page,
  • or case studies positioned with the partner in mind.

Be cognizant of how the partner wants to work with you throughout the sales process

Do they want to be part of the sales process? When? Up to what point?

Are there certain topics they’d like you to elaborate on?

Find out in advance for each partner seller.

Next Steps

As you start to dig in, capture the info that you gather from the partner. No need for a formal presentation or anything like that. Throw it into a doc that you can share with each other internally. Make it a living/working doc.

While partner channels can be a great sales channel (and part of a healthy overall marketing machine), it’s risky to put all your eggs in one basket.

What other channels can you add to your repertoire?

Other potential channels:

  1. Referrals
  2. Trade shows
  3. Networking
  4. Inbound
  5. Paid search
  6. Organic search (SEO)
  7. Social media
  8. Account-based engagement

If you’d like to chat about any of this, feel free to reach out.

Yes, let’s chat

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