Have one of the following scenarios ever happened to you?
- Your partner over promises during a sales pitch and you have to spend the rest of the call backpedaling.
- Your partner forwards you an email asking how to respond to a prospect — it’s a product question they should absolutely know the answer to.
- You bear the brunt of negative customer feedback from a partner-led implementation gone wrong.
This is the stuff of partner manager nightmares. Yet, these scenarios aren’t uncommon.
Companies often jump straight into doing business without taking the time to enable their partners, especially given the pressure partner leaders are under to drive revenue.
But trying to push partners into selling without any training or marketing materials is like telling a pre-med student to jump into an operating room.
So, how do you do enablement right? We spoke with PartnerStack’s Senior Customer Success Manager, Nima Hafezi on just that.
In this article we will:
- Explain why a sound partner enablement strategy matters.
- Share how the best vendors set their partners up for success.
Why does partner enablement matter?
On the surface, partner enablement seems like it’s about providing partners with basic education. But really, it’s about establishing trust.
The more of these boxes you check, the more confident partners will feel in your support and the more they will want to engage with your program.
Hafezi emphasizes, “Partners can tell right away if a vendor is on top of it or new to the space. Making a great first impression gives the partner faith in the future success of your partnership.”
Related: Why partner education can make or break your partner program.
The benefits of top-notch partner enablement
Trust opens the door to possibilities beyond a preliminary exchange of leads or rev share. In a trusting partnership, you can:
- Request (and receive) candid feedback on your program or new product features
- Feel more comfortable relying on certain partners when entering a new geo
- Share strategic insights about specific verticals you want to move into
- Trial new offer types or partner types
“Building deep trust in your partner relationships opens your horizons,” says Hafezi. “You know that when you show partners something new, they’re not going to try to game the system — they’re going to help you make your program the best it can be. That’s the mutual benefit.”
Perhaps most importantly, building deep relationships builds partner loyalty and helps you retain your best partners over time.
4 Steps to building a partner enablement program that works
Here’s how the best of the best go about designing their partner enablement process.
Review and sort your partner roster
Some partners will need a lot of hand-holding. Managed service providers and implementation partners, for instance, need technical knowledge and domain expertise to give customers an outstanding experience.
Other kinds of partners, like affiliates, may not require in-depth training. They just need your sales and marketing assets, MDFs and challenges to get their pipelines moving. If you ask them to take a rigorous training program, it’s just not going to happen.
Sorting your partners into various groups forces you to think hard about what they need to know and how they’ll best consume it.
Hafezi highlights: “Every partner has a level of effort they’re willing to put forward,” Hafezi explains, “Publishers, for example, have a lot of leverage and influence, so you’ll likely have to modify your enablement process to meet their expectations.”
First, segment your partners by type. That can help you determine:
- How much time partners might be willing to invest in training
- What kinds of sales assets partners might need for the type of business they do with you
- The type of marketing activities partners already do and how you can plug into them
- What their marketing budgets are
- What level of product knowledge partners already have
- How frequently they expect to communicate with you
Over time, you may want to segment even further within your groups. For example, into several sub-categories — inactive, active, new and non-revenue-generating — to create specific offer structures, SPIFFs and email sequences that can motivate each.
See more: How co-marketing strategies can build trust and win you that deal.
Build enablement journeys for each segment
Once you’ve got your partners in groups, it’s time to figure out which content and training is most suitable for them.
For some inspiration, here’s a list of enablement strategies Hafezi tends to see work well:
- Onboarding: Welcome emails or partner portal tutorials help guide partners through how your program works, how they earn money and the high-level value prop of your product or service.
- Structured communication: Relatively constant communication with partners shows that you’re invested in their success. But remember, communications aren’t just for sharing product or program updates. They should also show your appreciation. “Try triggering emails off of certain milestones, like a first sale, so you can be the first to congratulate a partner on a job well done,” Hafezi suggests.
- Marketing resources: Brochures, logos, case studies and social content all help partners message your product to prospects. Hafezi notes, “Shared case studies get particularly good traction.” Be sure to group relevant content together so it’s easy for partners to find what they need.
- Co-brandable templates: Partners want to showcase their relationship with you, and there’s no better way to do it than through co-branded content. In a platform like PartnerStack, you can allow partners to co-brand PDF templates, publish them to social media and measure campaign performance themselves.
- Training: Training courses give partners the technical knowledge and credibility they need to sell your product. Most companies use a learning management system (LMS) or a PRM with a built-in LMS to deliver this kind of training, but you don’t have to go the online route. Depending on your partner audience, in-person seminars to offer partners hands-on marketing help or closing support can be beneficial, too.
- Gamification: Partners want something to work toward. Tiered incentives and time-bound challenges light the fire partners need to complete their training or start reeling in leads.
Create a feedback loop
Because your product and GTM strategies are always in flux, enablement will be an ongoing process. To make sure partners are still getting what they need, give partners multiple avenues to give feedback, like:
- Polls
- Surveys
- One-on-one calls
- In-person sessions
Direct partner feedback is an excellent way to gather ideas for new campaigns and offers and develop new and exciting content. Setting up regular check-ins is a good way to prompt feedback.
Nima notes, “Some partners might not be as vocal when they’re struggling until you meet face to face. A few tweaks to their enablement path can get them back on track and even turn them into some of your best partners.”
Put numbers behind your enablement program
While it can take a while to see results in terms of realized revenue, there are key performance indicators (KPIs) you can track that signal partners are moving in the right direction. For example, if your enablement consists of an email onboarding flow, required training and a weekly newsletter, your KPIs might be:
- Email opens and clicks
- Training completions
- Training time
- Newsletter opens and clicks
Opens, clicks, and completions don’t necessarily mean partners will close deals or bring you qualified leads, but they do demonstrate partners are doing what you want them to do.
If you’re not sure you’re tracking the right enablement KPIs, Hafezi advises looking at the top 10 per cent of your partner base.
“What enablement are they taking advantage of that other partners may not be? Do an experiment — push other partners across your program to engage with those materials and see how the numbers change.”
See more: 5 signs that you’re ready for co-selling partnerships.
Do you need a partner enablement manager?
The short answer is no, particularly if you have a small program with few partners.
That said, a lot goes into designing and constantly updating your partner enablement program, and distributing that work among partner managers may not be your best bet. If you don’t have the budget to hire another FTE, you could nest enablement under a partner ops function.
But, as Nima points out, “The customers I work with that have a partner enablement manager tend to have a much more organized and fully-fleshed out program that gets partners up and running (and driving revenue) quickly.”
