GUEST: Jen Spencer
Twitter: @JenSpencer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenspencer/
HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR CONVERSATION:
Your partners are a natural extension of your sales, marketing, and customer success teams. And they should be treated as such.
These relationships and their health starts at the top.
Fear, uncertainty, and a lack of trust can erode the health of those partner relationships.
What would help your partners be successful in the partnership. Give them access to all information and control that will help them succeed. Expose more to your partners than you may be inclined to.
Alignment at the executive level is key. A culture of partnership and a win-win compensation agreement that doesn’t lead partners to compete with one another lays the groundwork for successful partnership.
Why bring resellers or referral partners on board?
- They give you access to a community you wouldn’t have access to.
- Fill in expertise gaps with expertise you don’t have.
- Give you a regional access you don’t have.
Symbiosis adds value for the customer, and makes the customer very sticky. Customer first drives effective partnerships.
B2B buyers in a SAAS environment can change providers at a moment’s notice. To keep customers, you’ve got to add more and more value.
There are beneficial side-effects to great partnerships.
The differing perspectives and backgrounds of partnering organizations can drive and catalyze innovation.
In M&A circumstances, partner organizations can help to preserve the integrity of the original vision, and the customer service of an acquired company.
Strategies are strengthened by collaborating to develop and implement them across companies.
Understand why you are partnering. Be sure you’re on the same page with your partners. Align your purpose with theirs, or know this is not a right-fit partnership.
Build out partner personas the same way you’d build out customer personas. Be purposeful about partnering.
Build a business plan together.
Relationships are not all about the soft-stuff. Data can help predict what partner relationships will thrive.
Partnership is a human endeavor.
Choosing a partner is as important and nuanced as choosing an employee to hire.
A bad partnership can impact your brand. And without synergy, a partnership will fizzle out. That’s lost opportunity, and wasted investment.
For a long time, partnership seemed like a strategy for large organizations only. That’s not true anymore. Small and startup organizations are using partnerships to catapult them to success.
And lastly, while Jen Spencer is a huge animal lover, she does not trust birds.
Your host on Mighty Good Work is Aaron Schmookler.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmookler/
And, we’re The Yes Works — Helping to make work good for people, and make people good for work.
Resources mentioned in today’s show:
Aaron’s appearance on Jen’s podcast: The Allbound Podcast
Allbound offers a free version of their platform to help you get started with your channel partner program.
Check out this episode!