Do you remember when your partner first started working with you? They helped out where they could but sometimes felt overwhelmed or unsure of what to do. But as time goes on and they become more comfortable in their role, they start to manage themselves and even help out other teams within the company.
This is what we call “partner enablement” — the ongoing growth and development of a partner so they can be as effective as possible in their support of your business. While there are many benefits to partner enablement, it can also be a bit of a minefield — hidden problems and things could easily go wrong if you’re choosing the wrong path.
Proper enablement while aiming for the success of partnerships will keep you top of mind. In this blog post, we’ll explore the advantages, disadvantages, and possible worst-case scenarios of partner enablement and provide tips for getting started.
How can channel partner enablement help your partners?
Partner enablement is the practice of providing your partners access to everything they need to be empowered and prepared to market and sell your product or service. This could include partner training materials, marketing collateral, or even access to your sales cycle.
Marketing and sales enablement is also an essential component of partner enablement. This type of enablement is focused more on the technical and sales side of the process. By definition, it is the process of providing your partner sellers or sales team sales training, sales process improvement, and sales and marketing alignment to be more effective in their roles.
But what’s often overlooked in enabling them is the importance of channel management. Enablement tools and partner channels like Trello and ClickUp can help you report and understand important early data points. This information can be used to improve your enablement processes and make sure that partners are moving through the stages efficiently.
At the start, however, you must give on-demand support to your partners to build a partner enablement strategy. You must dedicate your time to:
Partner onboarding
The onboarding process is important to ensure your partners are acclimated to your company culture and ready to do business. By taking the time to clearly define the expectations and roles of your new partner, you can set the stage for a productive and mutually beneficial relationship.
Furthermore, providing adequate training and resources will help ensure that your partners are able to hit the ground running and contribute effectively to your business.
Partner training or certification
This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many companies try to cut corners in this area. They think they can just throw a few docs and videos at their partners and call it a day. But if you really want your partners to sell your products and services effectively, you need to give partners the necessary certification and proper training.
Give your and your partner’s resellers, sales organization, and marketing team the tools and credibility they need to be successful, and they’ll repay you with increased sales and happier customers.
Keep your partners enabled
By immersing yourself in the process with them, you can consistently enable your partners. This means being there for them when they need you and being a sounding board for their ideas. It also means being honest with them about your own objectives and being transparent about your own process.
When you keep supporting your partner, you create a stronger relationship that can weather any storms that come your way. Not only will this help you report up, but you can also understand important early data points like how long each partner was in each stage. So, tools like HubSpot, Trello, ClickUp, etc., can work well.
More and more enablement technologies are looking to enable partner programs, but these tools are often underutilized because partners don’t know they exist or don’t know how to use them effectively. The key to unlocking its power is creating a culture of learning within the partner organization.
By making it easy for partners to find and use the resources they need when they need them, partner programs can help their organizations thrive.
The good:
It works.
When done right, channel enablement can be a game-changer for businesses. By equipping partners with the tools and resources they need to succeed, businesses can foster strong relationships that lead to increased sales and higher customer satisfaction rates.
Enablement really does drive engagement and action.
Imagine: you’re at a job you love, with a boss who values your contributions and makes sure you have what you need to succeed. That is the power of enablement. When we feel enabled, we feel motivated and engaged at work. We’re more likely to put in extra effort and go the extra mile.
You stand out.
Most partners don’t have proper enablement, so you have every advantage to stand out from the crowd. With the right partner enablement framework, you can make yourself indispensable and create a competitive advantage that will help you win more partner relationships.
You create long-term, loyal partners.
Your partners will appreciate it because they will feel heard and taken care of, which leads to building loyalty and trust. They’re also more likely to sing your praises to their networks. And let’s face it, when it comes to business, that’s worth its weight in gold.
It prompts and requires deep collaboration with your own team and partners.
Furthering your understanding of your partner’s business, as well as your own team’s understanding of your partnership program and strategy, can ensure that everyone is on the same page and working together towards a common goal.
The bad:
People get lazy and just create one-pagers.
While one-pagers are great for quickly conveying information, they don’t always provide the depth of understanding that partners need to be successful. When creating enablement materials, it’s important to strike a balance between providing enough information to be helpful without overwhelming partners with too much data. The goal is to give partners the resources they need to succeed without burdening them with an excessive amount of work.
It requires the right kind of person to help you build enablement.
Not just any old Joe will do. You need an ideal partner who is patient, intelligent, articulate, and, above all, passionate about enablement. Otherwise, you’ll just be wasting your time. And time is something you can never get back.
It requires the right kind of maturity in the partner program.
There’s no use trying to enable partners who aren’t ready or willing to be enabled, just like there’s no point in trying to teach a child who hasn’t reached the age of reason. If one or both partners are not ready or willing to commit to the long-term success of the partnership, then enablement will likely prove to be fruitless.
It is hard to scale, but there are ways to scale it properly.
This means that it can be logistically challenging and resource-intensive to roll out an enablement strategy to a large number of partners. However, there are ways to effectively scale enablement. For example, by using automation and self-service tools, you can reduce the amount of direct sales interaction and technical support required between enablement staff and partners.
Additionally, by developing clear success metrics and baselines, you can more easily track progress and ensure that each partner is receiving the customized support they need. When done correctly, scaling partner enablement is possible and can lead to improved results for both parties involved.
It’s not just traditional “teaching” where assignments can be sent out.
It involves adult learning and focusing on prioritization. For example, if you’re trying to enable your partners to do a better job of engaging with customers, you have to think about how to make the material relevant to them and their workflows. It’s not enough to just send them a bunch of links and expect them to figure it out – you have to be thoughtful about how they’ll interact with the content and what will help them learn and retain the information.
You’re competing with other business priorities.
There will always be a million different things competing for your partner’s attention. Their business operates with or without you, so getting them to focus on your collaboration will require convincing and persuasion. Appeal to their bottom line, use data to back up your claim, prove how other companies have benefited from collaborating with you and be persistent.
The ugly:
In some cases, partner enablement programs can actually create conflict between business units. If there is not clear communication between the different teams involved in the partner enablement process, it can lead to confusion and frustration on both sides.
Enablement done without proper validation will fail.
— and you can waste a lot of time doing so. Channel enablement without proper validation can be compared to building a house on sand – eventually, the foundation will give way, and the whole structure will come crashing down. Don’t let that happen to your enablement efforts! Only through validation can you be sure that you have effective partner enablement that will actually lead to the desired results.
It’s a big-time investment.
Especially initially, as you stand up your program and enablement resources. One of the potential disadvantages is the investment required, both in terms of time and money. Initially, you’ll need to dedicate significant resources to setting up the program and training your team. And even after the program is up and running, you’ll need to continue to invest in order to keep your partners up-to-date on new products, features, and changes.
It’s harder to track than other programs.
So justifying ROI is always difficult and will reduce the likelihood of buy-in. Enablement is the difference between a rocky start and a smooth sailing launch. It’s the difference between a product that fails to meet expectations and a product that exceeds them.
It’s a massive task to take on.
And there is a wrong time to really focus on making it work or trying to scale it. Given the other points, it’s easy to fall into the trap of either over-analyzing or needing to manage multiple partners but give them each enough time.
You can either start too early or too late
You can either start too early and believe you need to take on the world. Or you can start too late and have much more chaos and noise to work through to find the messaging that works best.
BD Paths’ Takeaway
In summary, constantly gathering feedback and improving upon your resources is the best way to go about this. You need to get real-time assessments directly from your partners so you can chip away at your resource base and figure out what works and what doesn’t. By constantly improving your resources, you’ll be able to stay ahead of the game and keep your partners happy.