It can be a complex and challenging process to recruit and retain channel partners. The better the partner, the more difficult it may be to recruit them. A thorough understanding of their business challenges and successes or opportunities, their buyer’s journey, their sales process, and ongoing partner enablement are all crucial for building a successful channel partner program.
Once your partnership ecosystem is established, you will want to continue to grow it.

The right partner management software can be your and your partners’ best friend. Managing your partner ecosystem efficiently and effectively without the right digital tools is inefficient, challenging, and can cause you to lose partners. When you have good management and a strong plan for streamlining communications, automating essential processes, and developing and disseminating valuable data, you and your partners will be more effective and be able to reach your goals together.

Regularly review your partner processes for what is working and what needs improvement. Ensure you have things that build trust and encourage constant partner engagement, such as an easy way to collect feedback and data from user engagement, customer satisfaction surveys, and personal communications to aid in your collaborative efforts and build trust and loyalty among partners.

Providing and tracking KPIs for yourself and partners in your ecosystem is crucial to understanding how the partnerships are performing and functioning and identifying the true value of the partnerships. This data will also help you attract and retain new partners in your ecosystem.

Sales enablement strategies represent another high-value satisfier that can help you attract and maintain partners in your ecosystem. The faster partners begin making sales and successfully selling your products, the more likely they will remain in your ecosystem.

Automated lead routing is one of the best sales enablement strategies. It is a direct benefit to each partner in your ecosystem. It expands their audience and eliminates research to qualify the leads.

Another helpful strategy is Market development Funds. These are funds that your partners can use for localized advertising and content creation to improve website traffic and trade shows. You can also offer things like a campaign in a box that provides partners with things like ready-made email copy, lead-nurturing workflows, social media posts, etc., to get them selling quickly and to facilitate ongoing sales.

Growing your Partner Ecosystem requires total commitment not only of time and resources but money and engagement. When done with consistency and perseverance, you will successfully continue to expand your partner ecosystem.

Download our guide for more information on recruiting profitable channel partners!