The success of your channel partner programs relies greatly on your partners themselves.  You can do everything in your power to support your channel partners, but if they’re a bad fit, the relationship will never work.  This places great importance on identifying and then onboarding partners that have significant revenue potential and a desire for a long-term affiliation. 

Partner Criteria

The first step in finding your ideal partner is to establish a set of guidelines and develop a persona that identifies key traits of your optimal reseller.  First look for potential partners with a strong foothold in your target market.  Having a solid demand generation process established is important when looking at the traits of a potential partner, although outsourcing is always an option. Your partner needs to have or be willing to acquire your desired sales skill-set as well as the necessary bandwidth in order to be a profitable partner.  Companies that already have a loyal customer base within your niche market should garner strong consideration as potential partners.

Benefits and MDFs

Chances are your company already has an established compensation package built for your channel partners.  In order to recruit newer, more profitable partners, it may be necessary to entice them with additional benefits.  Offering market development funds is a great way to persuade potential partners without sacrificing your profit margins.  Carefully weigh the revenue potential of each partner in order to determine the type and amount of added benefits you should offer them.

Online Research

Channel recruitment is essentially a sales process.  Thoroughly research your potential partners in order to determine if they fit your criteria.  Many channel managers develop partnerships without thoroughly researching their partners.  You will want to dive deep into the aspects of their company such as historical reputation, sales prowess and marketing capabilities.  With the time it takes to manage and develop these partnerships, performing the necessary research to ensure the partnership will be a good fit is essential.

Recruiting Outreach

After you’ve identified and gathered information on your target partners it’s time to start actively recruiting them.  Teleprospecting plays a key role in the recruitment of prospects for your channel.  Although a lot of information can be found through your initial online research, more specific questions that are company centric are necessary to identify quality partners.  Reaching decision makers within a target company can be difficult and time consuming.  This is a task better suited for a marketing team so that recruiting will only be dealing with warm leads.  Well-developed qualifying questions and appointment setting campaigns will ensure your recruitment team is speaking with truly qualified prospects.

Lead Nurturing

Much like any other relationship, developing a prosperous strategic partnership takes time.  You will find that many companies, although interested and qualified, may not be ready to partner with you right away.  Implementing a lead nurturing process based on teleprospecting as well as email work flows will ensure your company stays in the forefront of your targets thoughts.    Phone calls to determine where they are in the sales funnel and email workflows that continue to educate them on the value of your company will keep their interest until they are ready to discuss a partnership.

Pilot Programs

One of the best ways to incorporate a new channel partner is with a pilot program.  Once you’ve established a partnership you’ll want to see how they perform.  Rather than immediately committing to a long-term partnership, setting up a pilot program to gauge the true impact of a partnership will save you time and money.  You can research and get to know a company thoroughly, but it is impossible to know how they will perform until they begin to promote and sell your products.

Researching and recruiting channel partners takes time and effort and many companies lack the resources to successfully onboard partners without interrupting daily operations.  Hiring an experienced team to handle the entire process based on your guidelines can provide you with a higher success rate for your biggest targets as well as uncover additional partners that fit your needs.