Can you say in one sentence why a partner should care about your product? If you cannot, you are not ready to recruit anyone, and the work that comes first sits mostly inside your own business.
Partners borrow three things from you: your story, your definition of the customer and your sales process. If any of them is muddled, a partner will struggle to represent you, however well you pay them.
Look inward first
Your value proposition has to work on end users and on partners, because the partner will tell it in meetings you are not in. In broadcast and video technology, the version that travels best names an outcome: faster production, new creative options, a better viewing experience, a cost reduction someone can measure. A muddled story gets more muddled in the retelling.
Next, define the customer closely enough that a partner recognises them at once. Who needs the product, what pain does it fix, and how do they decide to buy? If you sell a cloud-based media asset management product, is the buyer the creative director at a mid-sized production company, the CTO of a broadcast network, or the marketing director of a corporate team? Each answer points to a different kind of partner, and a partner can only chase the opportunities they know how to spot.
Then write down the sales process that already works for you. The steps, the objections that keep coming up, the decision criteria and how you position against competitors. For specialised software that may include proof-of-concept builds, technical workshops or an ROI assessment. Partners need a route to follow, and a process that is defined and tested removes a barrier to taking you on.
Recruit before these three are in place and you tend to get false starts and damaged relationships.
Then narrow the field
“Anyone who sells to our target market” produces a long list and very little business. Being on a partner’s list gets you very little. The goal is to be one of the handful of vendors it puts first.
Partners worth pursuing tend to share four characteristics:
- They already have relationships with your target customers.
- They have the technical credibility to represent a complex solution.
- They sell complementary products that make a complete solution with yours.
- Their business model fits your sales cycle and pricing.
For a broadcast technology company, that can mean systems integrators who specialise in media production workflows rather than pro-AV resellers. For a SaaS company selling content management, specialist digital agencies can beat broad software distributors. Build partner personas as carefully as you built customer profiles: what does their ideal business look like, which capabilities must they have, and which gap in their portfolio does your product fill?
Talk to partners before you pitch them
Talk to potential partners without trying to sell to them. Ask what problems they have, how they evaluate a new vendor, what support they need to succeed, and which competing products they already carry and why.
Expect surprises. What you assumed was your main advantage may count for little with partners. Your planned support model may skip something they treat as non-negotiable. In broadcast and professional video, technical certification and hands-on training can be worth more to a partner than SPIFs, and in SaaS, implementation support and customer success resources can outweigh MDF.
Write the offer down
With personas and what you have learned from those conversations, define the offer precisely: what partners get from you, and what you expect from them. For many technology businesses that means bundles or configurations made for the channel, or co-branded implementation services.
Skills before headcount
A channel needs skills that differ from direct sales or product development. Note the word skills: at the start they do not have to sit in separate people.
- Channel account management: relationship-focused, with a grasp of your solution and of the partner’s business.
- Channel marketing: marketing to partners differs a great deal from marketing to end users.
- Technical enablement: partners need deep technical support to represent a complex product.
- Channel operations: agreements, certifications, deal registration and commissions all need someone’s attention.
A vendor starting out does not need a large team to cover these. Start with channel leadership that brings experience and relationships, and add people as the program grows.
Launching the program, measuring it and adjusting it over time is the subject of Executing Your Channel Strategy. Get your own side ready first and the recruiting goes faster, because partners can see what they are being asked to sell.