In today’s fast-paced channel ecosystem, success requires more than just the usual advice. Let’s explore five slightly unconventional yet impactful strategies to help you stand out as a future channel leader.
Embrace Ecosystem Thinking
Think beyond traditional partner programs that typically focus on enablement, sales and incentives. Consider how your different types of partners fit into a broader ecosystem to include co-innovation, joint value propositions, and collaborative problem-solving.
Map your ecosystem and identify areas like verticals and industries where collaboration can drive exponential value.
Simplify Partner Engagement
Technology should make it easier for partners to engage with your organization, whether it’s onboarding, accessing resources, or managing their pipeline. It must enable partners to deliver measurable outcomes.
Invest in intuitive “off the shelf” partner portals that centralize everything partners need, from sales collateral and training modules to deal registration and transparent performance dashboards. And please, make it single-sign-on (SSO).
💡 Pro Tip: Avoid developing a partner portal or PRM in-house. It will take your internal resources away from their real work, and cost your company a lot of time and money.
Focus on Partner-Led Innovation
If you want a vibrant, future-ready ecosystem that stays ahead of the competition while delivering exceptional value to customers, you need to start fostering partner-led innovation.
Empower partners to innovate on your platform or solution by providing resources, sandbox environments, and marketing support. These can be offered as incentives, especially as you encourage partners to design solutions tailored to unique market needs. Partners often have deep expertise in specific industries or verticals.
Leverage Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence is a very powerful tool for differentiation and helping you create a channel program that not only keeps pace with the market but leads it.
Keep a pulse on competitors' partner strategies and market trends to stay ahead. This isn’t about copying; it’s about learning and evolving.
Make competitive intelligence a teamwide priority by encouraging contributions from all levels of your organization as well as you partners.
Measure Partner Success Holistically
Move beyond revenue, deal registration count and deal size. It’s time for a mix of qualitative and quantitative metrics that assess the broader impact of partnerships.
Measure how partners contribute to customer success and satisfaction; what is the partners’ engagement (e.g. training and events attendance, portal tools and co-branded content usage, participation in MDF and incentives programs).
Although not easily done, tracking partner’s influence on opportunities is a big focus for many vendors at present.
Whatever you decide to measure, make sure that the partner has a transparent view and a clear understanding of how they are measured. It will improve your ability to nurture strong partnerships and will strengthen your channel program’s reputation as fair, forward-thinking and results-driven.
✨ Want more actionable strategies like these? Dive into the Channel Voices episode catalog, where we explore how channel leaders are breaking the mould and driving impact.