Henry McIntosh is founder of Twenty One Twelve Marketing – specialists in ideal client acquisition for tech, SaaS and financial firms.
How often have you heard that a tried-and-tested marketing tactic is “dead”? Even from me?
Sometimes, these declarations are the product of naivety; other times, it’s done for clicks. But when a marketing tactic isn’t working for you, I find it’s usually down to one of two reasons: either you’re not applying it correctly or it’s the wrong way to engage your audience.
Recently, I spoke with a marketing director at a tech-led employee wellness business. After a short introduction to partnership marketing, she wearily replied that they had spent a lot of time and money enabling partnerships, but that they just don’t work.
I’m writing this article to help prevent you from falling into the same trap. Because good partnerships do work—and they can unlock a whole lot of revenue. Leads that come from referrals are statistically faster to close—taking an average of 20 days versus 100 days for non-referred deals—and in my experience, they tend to be of better quality, with higher retention rates and lifetime value.
Why do partnerships fail?
Many people are fixated on reaching end customers, and so fail to see the potential of selling indirectly through partners. And even firms that see the benefits of partnerships can struggle to make them work. Why?
Because it’s too easy to get a new partner.
I’ve found that the ease of acquiring partners can lull people into a false sense of security, so they don’t work hard enough to enable their new partner. Even companies with codified partner onboarding, incentivisation and enablement plans can find partnerships difficult to maintain.
Let’s take a look at four of the most common pitfalls that derail reseller partnerships, as well as how you can avoid making the same mistakes.
1. It wasn’t the right fit from the start.
Let’s say a partner has access to your ideal target audience and a strong track record of selling to them. That means they’re an ideal partner, right?
Not necessarily. When setting up a partnership, you need to go deeper. Consider whether their organization’s values align to your own: What are their priorities in the partnership? How do they see it developing? Will they step on your other partners’ toes? Do they have a strong ESG agenda?
I’ve seen plenty of partnerships fail when vendors discovered their partners were using underhand tactics to push products. You need to do your due diligence on any new partner, identifying and mitigating any of their issues before they become yours, too.
To reduce the likelihood of signing bad partners, create an ideal partner profile (IPP) and sharpen your partner value proposition. If you can couple this with setting clear expectations from the outset, the right partners should stay the course.
2. The onboarding isn’t effective.
It’s important to have a clear onboarding process for partners. This should help them get your product/service to market more effectively, meaning quicker and better returns for you both.
During onboarding, lay out what the partner can expect to receive from you and what you expect in return, including the timelines involved. Also, train them on how to achieve these expectations, including robust sales and marketing support to help them get started.
Finally, they will need to know how to correctly report on key metrics so you have complete transparency over partner performance. It can also help to provide them with benchmarks demonstrating what similar partners have achieved over a similar timeframe. For example, we like to provide each new partner with a playbook and access to a portal with all the resources they need for the first three months of the partnership. This has helped ensure that they’re not overwhelmed with too much information, so they can quickly get things moving.
3. The wrong metrics are being measured.
It’s very easy to measure “outcome metrics”—namely, data that represents your end goal.
Now, I’m not saying to stop measuring outcomes. In the end, a partnership is successful because of the leads and conversions your partners generate. But a successful partnership is rarely built in a day. So, before you start measuring results, think about how you can gauge the effectiveness of the content and training you give to your partners. Some potential precursor KPIs include:
• The partner’s cost per lead (CPL) from different sources.
• Newsletter open rate (OR) and click-through rate (CTR) for content featuring your brand.
• Social media engagement for posts featuring your product, by the company and by its employees.
• Partner engagement—how frequently are they using your content and accessing the content portal?
• Hits to your landing pages on partner sites, as well as the conversion rate on those pages.
By measuring these metrics, you can quickly adapt your strategy based on data rather than relying on guesswork.
4. Partners aren’t being enabled properly.
Onboarding, training and enablement are strongly intertwined, and it’s a rare organization that does all three effectively. This is understandable: this combination needs constant attention to ensure peak performance—and that involves a lot of work.
During onboarding, you should set clear targets for partners as well as have internal targets you need them to hit—but it’s not set and forget. I recommend consistently providing training and fresh creative and sales collateral while also continuously communicating with your partners to support progress.
This is resource-intensive. It’s also, in my experience, the main reason channel partners underperform. Many of your partners—especially SME partners—may not have the resources or expertise to market your services. They may also have multiple vendors vying for their attention, so make sure you provide exceptional enablement to remain the focal point of their efforts.
Also, consider the macro-environment in which partners are operating: It’s difficult to compare partners in different fiscal years. After all, economic and political factors can have a major impact on their ability to market and sell effectively. Your enablement should be sensitive, agile and “on the pulse” of market sentiment.
Final Thoughts
I hope this list acts as a useful guide to creating more profitable partnerships. After all, strategic partnerships, when done right, can be key to propelling a brand to new heights.
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