Partnering is Hard and Getting Harder

Let’s face it, driving revenue through the partner ecosystem today can be a complicated proposition.

Gone are the days of the traditional hardware/telecom “channel” when channel partners were dedicated to a specific vendor and focused primarily on location-based delivery and installation of physical hardware. Today’s partners come in many flavors (e.g. ISVs, OEMs, SIs, Aggregators, etc.), have many vendor options to choose from and often spread their risk by creating partnerships with multiple competing solutions.

They choose who they partner with based on who will help them achieve their own business goals. They don’t care about vendor quotas, “assigned targets” or the internal metrics vendors use to measure partnership performance. Remember, they are in partnership with you for their own business objectives and will measure partnership effectiveness with their own set of metrics.

Of course, they demand more leads, worry about margins and tighten the screws on their vendors for administrative issues, but that’s mostly to create leverage. Ultimately, what they care about most is whether the partnership moves them closer to their strategic vision.

Vendors are no longer in the driver’s seat. They have to sell their partners on the value of partnering with them.

It’s important to help your Partner Managers simplify their approach.

At its core, partnering isn’t that complex. It’s about finding common and mutually-beneficial objectives and then systematically going after them together. Help your Partner Managers focus on crafting a long-term vision with each partnership, i.e. “where do both parties see the partnership going over the long haul?” Then, based on that long-term vision, develop short-term or fiscal business plans to move towards that vision together, i.e. “what can we do together this year that will take us closer to the end goal?”

With those two pieces in place, metrics, KPIs, review rhythms, execution plans and all the other partnership details become pretty obvious, and both parties are motivated to succeed because the plan is moving each of them closer to their own long-term goals.

Excelling in the complexity of partnerships is about recognizing (and focusing on) the simplicity underneath.