Most channel managers spend the majority of their time managing current partners.  The ability to seamlessly add partners to your channel eliminates costly overhead and can increase revenue dramatically.  There are many factors to take into account when on-boarding new channel partners.  You will want to ensure you are recruiting companies that fit the correct industry focus, geographical areas, selling capacity and customer base, amongst several other factors.  This can be a difficult, yet necessary task.  Having a structured step by step process that takes you all the way from identifying potential partners to on-boarding is the best way to ensure your company establishes profitable partnerships.

1. Establish your Guidelines

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.  You’ll want to ensure your partner has a strong foothold in your specific industry.  Having a solid demand generation process established is especially important when looking at the traits of a potential partner. Your partner will have to have your desired sales skill-set as well as the necessary bandwidth in order to maximize your channel.  Companies that already have a loyal customer base within your industry should garner strong consideration as a potential partner.  

2. Partner Benefits

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 marketing development funds is a great way to persuade potential partners without sacrificing your profit margins.  You’ll need to carefully weigh the revenue potential of each partner in order to determine the type and amount of added benefits you should offer them.

3. Research

Channel recruitment, at its core, is essentially a sales process.  You will want to 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 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.

4. Recruiting

After you’ve identified and gathered information on your target partners, it’s time start actively recruiting them.  Tele-prospecting 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 determine 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 survey questions and quality appointment setting will ensure your recruitment team is speaking with truly qualified prospects.

5. Nurturing

Developing a strategic partnership can involve a long sales cycle.  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.  Quality partners can be difficult to acquire, the last thing you want is for them to go to a competitor after you’ve determined they have future interest.  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.

6. Implementing

One of the best ways to incorporate a new channel partner is with a pilot program.  Once you’ve identified and 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.

Channel partner recruitment can be a difficult and time consuming process.  Winn Technology Group has decades of experience recruiting and nurturing partnerships for some of the top channel oriented companies in the country.