Growing your channel partner community is one of the best ways for organizations to increase revenue. The key is to find and onboard the right partners. Identifying an ideal fit with the resources necessary to provide a positive ROI can be challenging. Here we look at six steps to recruit the best channel partners for your B2B firm.

Create Detailed Partner Personas

The first step in finding your ideal partner is to establish a set of guidelines and develop a persona that identifies the traits of your optimal reseller. You'll want to ensure your partner has a strong foothold in your 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 and the necessary bandwidth to maximize your channel. Companies with a loyal customer base within your industry should garner strong consideration as potential partners.

Enhanced Your Benefits Package

Chances are, your company already has an established compensation package built for your channel partners. To recruit newer, more profitable partners, enticing them with additional benefits may be necessary. Offering market 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 to determine the type and amount of added benefits you should offer them.

Research Potential Partners

Channel recruitment, at its core, is essentially a sales process. You will want to thoroughly research your potential partners 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.

Focus On Your Top Targets

After identifying and gathering information on your target partners, it is time to start actively recruiting them. Teleprospecting plays a vital role in the recruitment of prospects for your channel. Although a lot of information can be found through your initial online research, more specific company-centric questions 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 qualifying questions and appointment setting will ensure your recruitment team speaks with truly qualified prospects.

Partner Lead Nurturing

Forming 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 and email workflows will ensure your company stays at the forefront of your target audience. Phone calls to determine where they are in the sales funnel and email workflows that continue to educate them on your company's value will keep their interest until they are ready to discuss a partnership.

Outsource Your Recruitment Efforts

Researching and recruiting channel partners takes tremendous effort, and many companies lack the staffing to successfully onboard partners without causing interruption to their current business. 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 and uncover additional partners that fit your needs.

Leverage Winn's experience for your next channel partner recruitment campaign!