Top 3 Things to Enable Partners

How to Setup a Partner Business Plan – to Enable Partners

I was asked the question, when trying to enable partners, “Do any of the Chanimal University courses walk through creating joint business plans? If so, which one?” But the response turned into the top three things you should do with a partner.

I am not a strong advocate of joint business plans to enable partners. Resellers don’t like to create them (and most aren’t strong in marketing, so don’t do much), vendors don’t like to read them, and partners seldom follow them.

Instead, I am a strong advocate of the Marketing Plan of Action which covers ONE thing that is done per month to promote the product. If a partner has 10-15 vendors, they just can’t do much with each of them. So, to get ONE promotion per month is real progress.

1. Get the product on their website

To enable partners, you should be using an SEO-optimized page that you, the vendor, has created. This way they can generate their own leads. One vendor that I worked with had over 4,000 partners and over 200 Channel Account Managers (CAMs). Yet only 13% of their partner had the product on their website—yet they were sending them leads. That is a travesty!

I helped them with this and a few other things…they had a $257 million DELTA increase in sales the following quarter and were shocked.

Easy Test for a “Good” Channel Manager

I have an easy way to test a “good” channel manager. If they say they have resellers in Austin, TX I type in their category (i.e. CRM). If their resellers don’t show up on the home page (should be one of the top 3 listings) then the channel manager is NOT doing their job.

Resellers have an advantage with local SEO (think of them as getting an extra 25 points/100 for being local (type in bike shops and you see local bikes shops, not ones in a different state)—yet the channel managers are not showing their partners how to leverage this local advantage.

And a local SEO website is the gift that keeps on giving—since it generates leads to the partner 24/7 (so you don’t have to send them leads (and they do great if they are also a referral partner)).

Video – How & Why to Setup Partner Landing Page

Here is a video I use for the resellers to convince them to use the landing page (it shows several samples, including one partner that has dominated on Google in his entire region for over 3 years—and never lost the #1 Google pole position).

2. Send an email that announces they carry the product

They MUST have their landing page set up first, or where do they send the respondents? They should also announce a webinar—an excuse for the email. I’ve attached a few samples of actual email templates. See Chanimal Channel Kit.

3. Get prospects to a webinar

The reseller may have anywhere from 50 to thousands of companies they have worked with. They have the inside track and a relationship to get the prospects to attend.

Then you, the vendor can give the dog and pony show, the reseller gets further exposure to the demo (although they should have a demo script in the portal) so they can get it down, and they can attend with their prospects. You present, then show them how to generate a quote and close the deal.

This is a “model call” and is good training for an internal salesperson also—and if you do the same thing with partners you do with internal sales… you usually get the same good results. Plus, when they see interest and money, they become further committed to selling your product.

Three (3) Simple Steps

These three simple steps apply to small to large partners. I have only found the largest of all even partners to even have a single person in marketing (they’re called re-sellers—not re-marketers).

In their case, you can come up with a detailed business plan to enable partners—but it is really a marketing plan since it concentrates on promotions.

It is also similar to the plan of action—but it often includes more “rinse and repeat” activities and may extend over the entire year—but it should still have something every month.

Bypass the Fluff

Regardless, I usually bypass the big “fluffy” plan and just go with a quarterly meeting with my accounts and set up the next 3 promotions. They are bite-sized enough to knock out, and you stay closer to your accounts with more regular contact. You also change your role from a channel sales manager, to channel marketing manager (a regional marketing manager)–unless you have both roles in your team—although

I’ve only been marginally impressed with those channel marketing types that I’ve met (they often create “corporate” branding campaigns—not pragmatic direct response pieces customized for the partner–so their stuff looks nice—but doesn’t pull.

Flip the 80/20 Ratios

These are some of the basics to enable partners that flip my ratios around. Most channel managers that attend my courses agree with the 80/20 rule when asked and say only about 20% of their partners are producing.

In my case, I typically have over 82% of my partners producing and spend the rest of the 18% getting the non-producers up to speed (always with the first three items). It’s the block and tackle promos that always work.

Take the Course

The different Chanimal University courses cover how to do all of these things—I would always start with the Certified Channel Manager course, then you can branch into other specialties.

I hope that helps – Ted