5 tips for building your first partner program
There is an entire generation of founders and revenue leaders who have built their careers in a primarily direct model.
As the cloud took hold in the 2000’s, there was less need for a partner to resell or install physical hardware and companies like Salesforce went direct to their customers.
Today that is changing, as buyers revert back to trusted relationships that can consolidate their technology spend and decisions.
I listened to a fantastic podcast episode featuring Simon Chassar, Chief Revenue Officer of Claroty who shared some of his experience on both sides of the partner equation.
Think from your partner’s perspective
No partner wakes up thinking about how they can make your day better.
They are thinking about their own revenues, margins and customers.
Simon describes how in his time at NTT he needed to rationalise the technology vendors that they were partnered with and followed this approach:
Which technology vendors cover the 90% of our customers’ needs (in their case they were focused on the security stack)
Pick a primary and a secondary vendor for each technology sub-category
Determine which services could to be attached to each of those vendor’s products
Implementation
Configuration/customisation
Integration
Service desk and managed services
Get enabled by the vendors to be able to deliver those services
So as a product vendor trying to recruit System Integrators or resellers, consider their view of the world and how they are selecting the vendors that can deliver the right solutions to their customers and also require the right wrap around services for them to make a living out of.
Take business to your partners
Its tempting to think “we’ll just sign up these partners and then they’ll start bringing us closed deals”
It doesn’t happen.
No-one knows the problem you solve and your solution to that problem better than you.
No-one knows how to generate demand for your solution better than you.
So don’t expect a new partner with a 45 minute training webinar to be driving you pipeline.
You’ll need to determine the right type of opportunities to take to each partner - based on location where you don’t have language skills, or based on other tech platforms that will require integration.
You pick up the phone to them, not the other way round in the early days.
Educate them on the problem not just the solution
As an early stage company Simon explains that it is not enough to go and teach your partners about your solution.
Just like a venture capitalist you are pitching for investment you need to explain to your partners about the size of the problem, the total addressable market, how you have demonstrated product market fit, and that this is just a case of scaling the go to market operation.
Build out a comprehensive training program that covers marketing, sales, implementation teams, service desk.
Think about the training you provide to your own new starters.
Your partner training needs to be even better as you are trying to reach people outside of your four walls.
Count your external sellers and create an XVT metric
I’d not heard this before but I’ll be using it moving forward!
When Simon was at VMWare someone coined the term XVT to mean the multiplier of the vendor technology sales team.
At 10XVT if the vendor has 100 salespeople then the partners have 1000 salespeople - this is the leverage of channel programmes.
Aiming for 10XVT is a good target for a Series A/B size company, once you reach IPO you might aim for a 20XVT, and companies like Microsoft have 100XVT.
Moving from account support to sales support
Simon’s final tip is around evolving the relationship as the best partners build up their internal capabilities to not just identify opportunities but to influence them.
Your channel team will move from channel account management, to channel sales management, providing sales support to the partner sales team, rather than running the sales process yourselves with the support of the partner.
Check out the link below for building out a partner sales incentive using award cards like these:
Summary
Partnering should be a key strategic pillar for SaaS businesses - as buyer’s seek out trusted relationships it will be harder and harder to sell directly into new accounts.
As Simon lists:
Think from the partner’s point of view
Take business to them in the early days
Educate them on the problem and opportunity
Create an XVT metric
Move from account management to sales management when ready
I recommend listening to the podcast - 18 minutes well spent.
Ready to get build? Here are three other articles to get you thinking:
5 essential steps to launching your referral partner programme
How to build a SaaS partner programme
How to reward partner sellers with incentive cards
And why not start building your potential partner list with Reveal - the nearbound revenue platform that connects your partner data to your own CRM.
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