Many organizations are looking to solution providers as their trusted guides to address issues like enabling work-from-anywhere, and overcoming vendor and product sprawl.
The philosophy about what a channel partner should consider when selecting a new vendor comes down to three pillars: enablement, engagement, and economics.
Pillar 1: Enablement
Partner enablement is about equipping partners with the knowledge, tools, and support they need to successfully represent and sell a solution. It’s a collaborative effort between the vendor and its partners to ensure a seamless customer experience and maximize growth.
Partners are faced with a barrage of choices and noise in the market, so tracking product and portfolio updates is challenging. That’s why vendor channel sales engineers are a must to enable partners with the necessary knowledge and tools. They constantly train themselves on the solutions – and then enable partners with the latest information to deliver customer success.
Pillar 2: Engagement
Ken McCray
The engagement piece is paramount, and it’s all about relationships.
Developing the rep-to-rep relationships between a vendor and a partner is critical to success. Are there programs in place to drive collaboration? What is the expectation for account planning as you go to market, or as you talk to a particular customer? Are you aware of all the resources available to drive partner growth?
Next are the technical relationships. Do you have this kind of relationship set up with your partners? For instance, when a partner is faced with a customer challenge, do you have the relationships internally to be able to solve a problem quickly?
Finally, the executive relationships drive the other two. Are the executives communicating on a consistent basis and at every level? When I started my current role, I talked to our CFO to make sure that he had relationships across all our top accounts from a CFO-to-CFO perspective. This high-level relationship-building is critical to moving the partner relationship forward.
The channel sales team is expected to drive partner growth through a number of methods, including gaining an understanding of the partner’s goals and areas of expertise, deploying the resources needed to train partner reps, creating executive relationships, providing deal support, offering support for marketing and demand-generation, promoting the partner across the vendor’s internal organization, and serving as a point of contact for any partner needs.
Pillar 3: Economics
Most important to partners is the economics of a vendor’s program.
Is it profitable, not only in financial terms, but considering time-to-revenue, certification requirements, and other investments? And since the trend toward consolidation persists, does your vendor of choice offer integrated solutions to meet this demand and drive your operational efficiency?
Staying in tune with these metrics is what drives your financial success and should guide a vendor’s channel strategy.
Lean on your Partner Pillars
When researching vendor solutions to expand your offering, enablement, engagement, and the economic opportunity should be examined closely. Taking these into consideration ensures you find the correct vendor and assures your business growth.
Ken McCray is vice president of channel sales for Fortinet.
Image: iStock
