In a recent Channelscaler webinar, we asked hundreds of vendors a simple question:
What drives long-term partner loyalty?
Here’s what they told us:
- 86% said ease of doing business
- 71% said trust, fairness and transparency
- 64% said enablement and support
- 46% said financial incentives
- Only 17% said the quality of their account managers
That last one is the surprise. We talk so much about the importance of the partner account manager, and yet, vendors themselves are telling us that PAMs are not the reason partners stay loyal. Ease of doing business is.
And they’re right.
Partners work with multiple vendors. Every portal, every process, every deal reg form gets compared. If your experience is clunky, confusing or slow, partners will look elsewhere, no matter how strong the relationship is.
Forrester’s recent blog on The Partner Sales Divide highlights a key part of the problem. PAMs are often undertrained and under-supported. They are expected to drive results but rarely given the systems, processes or clarity they need to succeed.
If you haven’t invested in a good PRM and partner program automation for key channel processes, they’ll spend their time chasing down content, managing spreadsheets, or firefighting internal conflicts over deal ownership. That’s not strategic, nor scalable.
When you get the basics right, clean data, clear workflows, and intuitive partner journeys, you give your PAMs room to breathe. You create space for them to focus on joint business planning, deal progression, pipeline growth, and sales enablement. You set them up to be the strategic force you need them to be with your partners.
Loyalty starts with ease of doing business.
So give your partners the experience they expect.
Give your PAMs the support they need.
And give your indirect business the foundation it needs to grow.
