Are you ready to take your partner relationships to the next level? Partner Business Planning is the secret sauce for partner success. In this blog post, we’ll share four proven strategies to help you set clear goals, align expectations, and measure success. But wait, there’s more! We’ve also got a special “treat” in store for you at the end.
So, if you’re looking to strengthen your partnerships, drive growth, and achieve mutual success, keep reading…if you dare!
Partner Business Planning – 4 tricks and a Treat for Success!
Trick 1 – Ghoulish Goals
Nobody wants to be the odd one out. So just like choosing your Halloween costume or party theme, make sure that you and your partners are fully aligned with your channel go-to-market business goals. Are you both trying to drive new revenue, new business logos, or focus on renewals? After all, nobody wants to be the pumpkin in a room full of zombies!
Is your overall goal to maximize (sales) at all costs, or are you focusing on quality of engagements versus quantity? Is a full size candy-bar worth the extra effort compared to multiple smaller treats?
Ensuring that you have a shared vision and that everyone is reading from the same script can change a b-movie horror into a blockbuster!
Trick 2 – Identify your most Bountiful Targets
We all know that not every house is created equal in terms of friendly residents and sugar-filled treats. Well, the same can be said for prospects and customers. Share your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), buying personas and customer insights with your partners, and establish where they already have relationships with prospects (a friendly face is always likely to hand out more candy, or in this case revenue).
Equip your partners with product knowledge. Sharing business cases, positioning and core messaging will help them to knock on doors and collect the rewards.
It is important to work with your partners to focus on targeting organizations that will deliver the best short and long-term value, rather than scattering their efforts like pumpkin seeds.
Trick 3 – Keep your Frightful Friends Close (and your enemies closer)
So, your partnership team is assembled. Your knowledge has been shared, and your goals, target market, and starting plan are in place. This is where communication and regular check-ins become the skeleton key to unlock more treats!
- How are you going to share your plan with your partners?
- How will you keep track of progress towards mutually agreed KPIs / goals?
- Is there as much candy available as you expected?
- Are you having success in some areas and not others?
- What will you do if things change?
Communication works best as the gruesome twosome of scheduled and ad-hoc. Regular reviews keep everyone focused and on-track, while live updates and reports will help keep your plan flexible, and adaptable! Engage your full customer-facing teams internally and externally (hint, it’s not just sales) as you never know where that magical insight, the final ingredient to your success spell, may come from.
“Words of intention, let them be known, together we’ll thrive, our efforts have grown.”
Trick 4 – Time is short, use it wisely
Halloween is just one night, so being prepared and responsive to change is vital. You have a few short hours of darkness to make memories and collect your treasures before it is over for another year and the costumes and decorations go back in the closet. But partner business planning can’t just be a one-off activity.
We hear horror stories of perilous PowerPoints, sinister spreadsheets and dreadful documents that take days, weeks and even months to prepare. All then confined to the drawer (or more likely drive) of doom, never to see daylight until the return of the planning cycle the next year.
A partner business plan that is as dusty as an old skeleton, is the stuff of nightmares and is never going to help you achieve your mutual goals.
Resurrect your plans with automated online partner business planning to keep the cauldron bubbling with real-time information, cast a wide web of communication and make sure nobody is left hiding in the shadows.
And now it’s time for your Treat!
Counting out the candy at the end of the night can be nearly as much fun as the adventure itself. It quantifies the results of your endeavours. But what if you had a live, real-time candy counter to track results as you go?
How about removing the terror of time-consuming, error prone manual planning and replacing it with an easy-to-use, robust and intuitive system that is accessible by both your team and your partner’s team? You will get the gift of precious time for your collective teams to focus on more productive revenue generating and customer facing activities.
We are delighted to announce that this holiday season will see the launch of the enhanced Channelscaler Partner Business Planning module. Now, how about that for making your plans and results Spooktacular.
For further insights, check out our blog: Partner Business Planning Guide: Why It Matters and How to Make It Work.
Contact our friendly team for more information or a demonstration and we promise they won’t bite!
