Partner Recruitment is often one of the standard objectives for Channel Managers, but how often do we look at the conversion rates of getting signed partners to revenue producing partners?
So much time and effort are invested in partner recruitment campaigns, program messaging and courting prospective partners. What is your process once they click submit on your partner application? Maybe they get an auto-generated email saying “Thanks for joining our Partner Program.” Too often it ends there. What happens next is dictated by the partner and whether they are keenly focused on integrating your product offering into their solution stack or if they just need to become a partner to fulfill a single opportunity.
After investing time, resources, and money to recruit partners, wouldn’t you like to take control back and increase the odds that your new partners are going to result in a healthy, growing revenue stream? To make this happen you need to put as much focus on their first 60-120 days as you do getting them to join the program. What are the steps that a new partner should take to build the appropriate level of internal expertise with your offering? What do they need to then craft and execute an effective demand generation program to begin to build a pipeline, aka register deals, and ultimately close business?
Here is a 5-step process for creating an onboarding journey that will energize even those one-off partners that initially didn’t see the long-term opportunity.
- Map out an onboarding journey with simple actionable steps.
- Serve out each new step as they complete another milestone so you’re only asking them to do one thing at a time.
- Celebrate early wins with unexpected rewards or recognition.
- Ideally, you should customize the onboarding path based on the role of the partner contact so you’re asking the right person in the organization to do an appropriate task.
- Reinforce your customer business proposition at every milestone so they understand that each step is bringing them closer to realizing the value that your partnership brings.
Show your partner the value of building a revenue stream with your company by creating a customized onboarding journey that takes simple actionable steps and will lead to big dividends. Capture your partners’ mindshare early in the relationship and cultivate a long-term revenue stream for your business.
For more details on building a strong partner relationship, see our ebook: 5 Keys to Building Strong Relationships in Channel Marketing
For helpful partner recruiting tips from three channel experts, check out Partner Recruiting: What It Is and How To Do It.