In this post, I’ll outline a partnership framework you can use to start making more revenue from your partnerships.
Partnerships are tremendously beneficial as a source of brand awareness and sales leads.
But they remain under-utilized. As a matter of fact, only about 2-3% of the partnerships perform as expected and deliver the expected results. And as it is with everything else in this world, they need a lot of solid, systematic work.
If you’d like to measure your partnership maturity score instantly, then use this self-assessment. It scores you on a partner maturity model.
Why Partnerships Struggle?
The #1 cause of that under-utilization or a struggling partnership is that we do not systematically address the mechanics of the partnership.
It often arises because we think of the outcomes we want but are unable to execute towards them.
For example, every B2B services or technology product firm knows that partnering with Microsoft Azure, GCP, and AWS has high revenue potential.
But without a clear idea of how to engage and what (and when) to expect every week and every month, what we are left with after 3-4 months of excitement is a logo on our website and no attributable revenue impact.
Just like in sales, since every company has limited people resources, there are “qualification” criteria to be met before successful partner engagement can happen. Both parties want to invest only when they are certain the investment will play out.
Most savvy business leaders will indeed budget for upfront investment such as trainings, creation of a value proposition, some collateral, and some marketing.
But without a roadmap, results are always expected to be just around the corner. Impatience with a stagnant weekly sales dashboard leads to ad-hoc field sales campaigns with high sensitivity to budget. Since such brute force tactics rarely work, soon the partnership action gives way to shinier, newer sales channels or methods.
If this sounds familiar, then do not despair because there is an easy way out of this quagmire.
I’ll outline before an executable playbook based on a standard partnership framework model that you can follow.
Someone once said, “overnight successes have typically been years in the making”. Only in our case, success is only 90-120 days away with systematic effort.
How to Prioritize with a Bias for Action – The Partnership Framework
The first step is prioritization.
Fortunately, it is the easy part. You look at a list of partners, think of potential, evaluate client demand at target accounts, consider your prior work or experience, think of alignment with your current portfolio, field connects, and so on. A fairly sophisticated model can be built quickly, and yield a fairly justifiable prioritization.
The pitfall is: What Next?
This is where a framework for engagement helps.
Once you have that in place, you have measurements that can track the attribution of results (or lack thereof.). That’s the real secret sauce of a partnership.
Start with the following simple partnership framework which can also be called the business plan.
It’s implemented slightly differently for product companies versus channel partners.
- Competency: what underlying value will this partnership be based on, viz. solutions, integrations, tech and domain expertise, etc.
- Co-marketing: how we’ll raise awareness and educate on 3 fronts viz. to clients, partners, and internally
- Co-sales: account mapping, how we’ll connect with each other, engage clients, pursue conversations, and close.
- Governance: Setting target results, constant monitoring of the framework execution make decisions on next steps
Planning to Get Early Revenue or Quick Win
Often, the most important thing is to get early revenue or a win (sales deal). This helps you validate the market, drive investments, and also engage partners effectively.
For that purpose, you should execute what is called an initial account mapping exercise.
In the beginning, depending on the partner you choose, it may not be possible include your partner sales team in this planning.
So don’t hesitate to make this yourself:
- Which of your client accounts use the partners that you have chosen? (talking to clients helps)
- What challenges are these clients facing ? (use your knowledge of the client or ask clients)
- What could be the right incentive for the partner at this client account? (entry, expansion)
Once you have that, make a pitch for a solution that can help the client with this problem. Don’t boil the ocean but focus on small incremental value. Try to ensure that this solution can be scalable to other similar clients on your list.
You may need some brainstorming and validation. Try to pitch a presentation first, unless a technical POC is very quick to make. And sometimes it could be as simple as a qualified staff augmentation. You may need partner specific trainings and certifications as a minimum bar.
Once you can engage the client in this manner, engage the partner sales person who sells to the client. That gives you a stronger platform for the relationship to prosper. And your partner will actively contribute to your account mapping for joint success.
At this point, you are likely on your way with your partnership.
Of course, stay conscious that other companies like you are also courting your partners for the same clients.
The Two Tier Approach
The number of priority partners will depend on the resources you have to allocate. It’s obvious that you can’t handle a large number of partners.
So a natural tiering system must be created.
Here’s how to think in terms of multiple tiers so you can implement them effectively:
High Tier: package, co-promote and co-sell
This assumes that you have assets (solutions, case studies, trained resources, etc.) in place so you can systematically execute the framework with a focus on consistent revenue generation or expansion.
On the competency front, you would focus on packaging the solutions better, getting more certifications, etc.
On the co-marketing front you would focus on outbound and inbound campaigns, ABM, PR, and brand building.
And on the co-sales front you would focus on connecting deeper on the field on a target accounts list, generating client conversations, and pursuing them together.
Next Tiers: educate, enable partnership basis, promote
This tier assumes that the current capabilities and/or business potential do not warrant significant investments but you still want to continue to look for opportunistic revenue generation.
As that revenue comes in, you then decide whether to move the partnership to the higher tier.
As a result, you would still execute the framework, but at a less elevated level.
On the competency front, you may focus on a point of view instead of a solution.
For co-marketing, the focus will be on awareness rather than specific outbound campaigns,
and on the sales front, the focus will be on maintaining a field cadence to surface potential opportunities for collaboration. Sustained efforts here will always yield results and a movement to the higher tier over time.
Joint-Incentives of Partners
This is often lost in translation.
It’s important to identify the win-win so we can keep it top of mind.
Each partner stakeholder will focus on what they need most – services or license revenue, opening a new account, cross-sell, up-sell etc.
Be conscious of this and bake it into the governance framework so it can trickle down to sales, marketing, and competency workstreams of the framework.
You’d be surprised how often a thing so seemingly mundane as “what’s in it for me?” causes the execution to be excruciatingly painful and slow.
Conclusion – Execute Using the Partnership Framework
Partnerships can yield tremendous growth and brand impact if they are nurtured systematically.
I hope the partnership framework in this article was helpful. Act as the CEO of your partnerships and you will start driving revenue results within 90-120 days.
Good luck!
Measure your partnership maturity score instantly using an online self-assessment that is based on my partnership maturity model.
Connect with me for strategy session.