Sales in the channel have taken off in recent years and many organizations have been looking to expand their channel communities. Identifying and onboarding new partners who will be profitable can be a difficult task. Here are ten questions to help your company recruit profitable channel partners.

What types of companies can best spread the word about your products?

Narrow down the industries, company size and potential audience that will be a good fit for reselling your product.

Which products or services can be sold as a value add to your product?

Determine which technologies or services that will make a particularly good addition to your product offering.

What type of technical expertise are you looking for in a channel partner?

Ideally, you’ll want a channel partner that has experience in products relevant to your own so the learning curve on selling them won’t be so steep.

Which industries should your ideal partner be focused on?

Partners who are already focused on the same target industries as your company and have already built databases of those audiences can be a natural fit.

How much budget and resources will be dedicated to reselling your product?

Determine a threshold for which you expect your partners to be spending both time and money on marketing and selling your product.

What is the ideal geographical footprint for new channel partners?

Narrow down the areas of the country/world you would like to expand your channel partner program into and focus your attention on companies with a strong foothold in those regions.

Do you want to go after seasoned or potential new resellers?

Researching your competitor’s reseller community and identifying new partners from there can be extremely effective, but you may also want to look into recruiting fresh resellers.

What compensation and incentives will you offer to your resellers?

This is the primary draw to your program, so you need to decide how your resellers will be compensated and create a bonus structure for those who go above and beyond.

What will be your criteria for providing market development funds?

MDFs are an important piece of creating a successful channel partner community and you will need to determine what criteria will need to be met for partners to receive them.

How will you be supporting your partners from a sales and marketing perspective?

In order for a channel marketing program to be successful, you partners will need your support with sales and marketing training, content assets and campaign templates.

Download our free eBook for more tips on building a profitable channel partner community.