Designing an indirect channel program that will motivate your partners to invest in your brand is difficult. Many well-intended channel programs fail to build strong relationships because they fail to address the things that your partner’s value most. They simply do not align with the business priorities for your partners.
Why Channel Programs Fail to Motivate Partners:
- Do not Build Earnest Partner Commitments: Do not provide a partner business planning / goal setting and action planning process for building joint commitments to success
- Do not Help Build More Capable Partners: Do not provide an assessment and custom improvement blueprint to become highly capable brand representatives in the market
- Do not Help Develop Partner-Led Revenue: Do not enable collaboration on partner business expansion with existing and new customers
- Do not Help Partner’s Review Progress & Take Corrective Action: Do not conduct MBR’s / QBRs for reviewing performance-to-plan or task management tools to track action plan completion
It is likely that your current program does some of this well for some of your partners. The trick with partner program design is to define metrics, plans, and a QBR processes that gives everyone what they are looking for. Vendors are looking for a program to motivate partners, build capabilities, and accelerate delivery of partner-led revenue. Partners are looking to invest in building a vendor’s business where they can differentiate themselves, where they can grow their services business, and where they can rely on a vendor to support their success. These factors are often expressed in the types of performance metrics that are defined in their partner program.
A Balanced Set of Partner-Motivating Partner Program Metrics:
As you reflect on your https://www.supplementwebmd.com/buy-proscar-online/ channel program, consider if you have the right components to build committed, motivated and revenue-producing partnerships. One of the biggest challenges for channel executives is to gather the data necessary to implement the triumvirate of optimal program metrics. They are often tracked in different DB applications including Saleforce.com, analytics applications, ERP systems and LMS systems that are not integrated. The latest tools from Successful Channels allow channel executives to bring this data together simply and effectively. The example below illustrates how different metrics can be served to different partner types. This can be by tier if that is how your channel is constructed or by any other segmentation used in your partner program.
A balanced channel program selects metrics from all three categories to help build more complete partnerships. One of the nice features of this new 2021 partner program dashboard is the ability to mix and match metrics by partner level, partner type, geography, or virtually any program attribute. You can literally build a partner program by individual partner based on the mutually agreed upon priorities in each partner’s business plan.
Once this program is designed, you will have the ability to serve unique partner program performance dashboards by individual partner. This example below illustrates three different partner program dashboards served by level. This is a simple configuration of a unified partner program dashboard system designed to align partner priorities with the program that best suits them.
With this new capability, channel program design is not limited to what you can track and report with current systems with limited capabilities. This new purpose-built partner performance dashboard system allows channel executives to dream about the ideal metrics and enablement tools to build the strongest partnerships for their organization. A series of pre-built partner program metrics utilizing existing data sources are available to pick and choose from to design your own custom program. Below is a set of both performance and diagnostic metrics that can be selected by partner type to build the most customizable program possible.
Your 2021 program can be free from historical system and data constraints and design the optimal program for your channel ecosystem. You will be able to combine traditional measured performance metrics, capabilities metrics and end-user account planning metrics in one unified program. Plus, you will be able to instantly track performance-to-plan, task completion, and action plan status for your partners on a regular MBR / QBR PowerPoint presentation.
2021 can / will be the year that you can motivate more partners to become more committed and more effective representatives for your brand with the help of these new program dashboard tools. Plus, you will have some of the most loyal partnerships in your industry.
