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7 Things Changing the Partner and Reseller Channel in 2020

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2020 has already proven to be a remarkable year. Not just for the world at large but also for partner and reseller channels.

Staying ahead of the curve is crucial to your business success this year and beyond.

In this post, we’ll explore the seven trends changing the partner and reseller channel in 2020 and give you tips on how to adapt your partner and reseller relationship strategies.

Customer Experience is King

Forget the old customer acquisition funnel. Customer engagement no longer stops with the purchase. It’s an ongoing lifecycle with increasingly important metrics for success like usage and renewal.

Being great at sales is n0 longer enough. Instead successful partners will need to incorporate activation, adoption, expansion and renewal of the product to the sales motions. 

How to take advantage: Incentivise enablement initiatives to get partners investing in customer experience processes.

Servicing of Micro Niches

It is no longer enough for partners to specialise in generic verticals. Instead, end customers are seeking out partners with hyper-specialised skills focused on business outcomes.

Solution provider business will need to adapt by becoming more unique and specialised so as to be differentiated.

How to take advantage: Enable micro-vertical solutions which include training on adjacent technologies and highlighting potential service opportunities.

Increased Complexity

Creating a complete solution isn’t easy. There so many moving parts in an IoT solution – all the hardware, software and services involved to satisfy end customers needs.

To ensure continued success, solution providers will need to work together and merge their diverse skills and specialisations.

Some of these solution providers will transact and will join your partner program to progress up the partner levels. Other solution providers (next-generation partners) will not transact and possibly won’t even join your official partner program.

How to take advantage: Foster partner-to-partner ecosystems.

New Generation of Partners

Traditional VARs or Systems Integrators are no longer the default trusted advisors to new buyers in the era of cloud-delivered products  New types of partners have emerged, such as Managed Service Providers and cloud solution aggregators like AWS.

Financial advisors, marketing consultancies, and even insurance agencies are coming into technology ecosystems influencing customer buying behaviours.

The majority are not interested in managing the transaction but are looking for the downstream, high-margin services of implementation and integration.

How to take advantage: Pursue a low-key relationship with these influencers and create ways for them to engage in the partner ecosystem.

Focus on Services

The margins partners are making in reselling hardware and software is getting tighter. It’s difficult for this activity alone to make an impact on profitability. In response, solution providers are focusing their efforts on consulting, business process optimisation, provision, configuration, outsourced management and support services. Naturally, this can lead to conflicts with your own professional services organisations, which also vie for those lucrative high-margin services.

How to take advantage: Clarify what services opportunities partners and resellers pursue and what services only your business is to provide.

Digital is the only Marketing

68% of B2B customers prefer to research solutions online and 62% make final decisions solely through digital content. By the time an end customer even engages with sales, they are information-rich and close to making a buying decision. Pretending digital marketing doesn’t work is no longer an option.

Unfortunately, most solution providers are comfortable with traditional marketing, so are woefully lacking the skills and resources to be successful marketing online.

How to take advantage: Shift partner marketing funds and resources to only support digital marketing efforts.

Effects of COVID-19

The rapid proliferation of COVID-19 across the globe has strained business relationships. The long-term effects of this global pandemic are as yet unclear. One thing for certain is uncertainty. Therefore, a genuine shift to data-driven decision making is highly likely.

Furthermore, lockdown restrictions have seen an overnight shift to remote working. This will make regular communication via video conferencing calls between you and your partners essential to business success and improved relationships.

How to take advantage: Implement a partner experience platform to leverage data and improve communication with partners and resellers.

In sum, if you’re unwilling to adapt from traditional thinking and take advantage of these trends now you will be left behind in 2020 and beyond.

Advance Your PX Today with Follco

As we’ve covered, it’s crucial that you understand these trends and use this information to shape your partner and reseller relationship strategies.

Do you need to forge closer links with your partners and keep your lines of communication open at all times? A Partner Experience platform is what you need.

Here at Follco, we offer businesses the ability to create feature-rich communication platforms that keep your partnerships operating at peak capacity. Ready to boost your critical PX metrics? Visit our website to learn more and get started with Follco today.

 

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Five Reasons to Invest in a Partner Experience (PX) Platform

Few factors are more critical to the growth of your business than healthy partner and reseller relationships. Those thriving relationships can open new doors, expand your reach and unlock a host of other exciting benefits.

Given that’s the case, are you doing enough to manage and nurture those relationships? Engaged partners are one thing, but you want fanatics.

If you’re going to create those strong ties between your partners, you’ll need to invest in a high-quality partner experience platform. This tool can help you to deliver exceptional experiences that scale your channel partner programme.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at Partner Experience (PX) and five reasons you should invest in a PX platform.

What Is Partner Experience (PX)?

Before we dive into the main reasons to invest in a PX platform, let’s go through a quick definition of PX and what it can do for you.

Essentially, PX can be defined as the result of every factor and initiative that exists to make your partnerships amazing. Relationship-oriented businesses use a PX score to reflect the quality of their partnerships and shape their strategies going forward.

A PX score can be used as the ultimate metric to measure how you should approach your partnerships and which interventions are most appropriate. If you would like more general information around PX, be sure to read our piece on PX and how it can benefit your business.

Five Reasons to Invest in a PX Platform

Now that we’ve got a better idea of PX and what it means, let’s take a closer look at the five reasons you should invest in a PX platform.

  1. Create a single source of truth to reduce confusion

How do you currently assess the effectiveness of your partnership initiatives? You might take a look at the duration of your relationships, for instance, or the number of partners that you have.

But with such limited metrics, it’s often hard to get the full picture. While you might have long relationships, for instance, you can’t really tell if your partners are truly satisfied and whether or not your relationships are driving symbiotic value.

A feature-rich PX platform can empower you to unlock new insights and get a full view of how your business is performing. The most powerful PX platforms provide you with a direct link to your partners and offer a suite of supplementary metrics to drive insight.

  1. Reduce the cost of answering repeat questions

Statistics from Salesforce show that 67% of customers say their standard for good experiences is higher than they’ve ever been. If you’re going to impress and retain your most loyal customers, it’s essential that you make their success your business.

This can be taxing, though. You’ll need a team of customer support and customer success agents who communicate with your customers as and when necessary. This can quickly drive up your costs and even cause confusion with mixed messaging.

High-quality PX platforms make it simple for you to build and scale your channel partner programs. You can leverage this communication channel to reduce the cost of answering repeat questions and ensure that your message is always heard loud and clear.

  1. Create a stronger internal culture

The world’s most partnership-oriented businesses work incredibly hard to cultivate a strong internal culture that values great relationships. Rather than just listing that as a corporate value, those businesses walk the talk and provide their teams with the tools and processes to make relationships great.

If you invest in a high-quality PX platform, you’ll really demonstrate your strong commitment to partnership excellence. Not only will it provide your team with the groundwork for relationship building success, but that tool will also underscore your corporate value and secure buy-in from your team members.

  1. Amplify your brand

If your partners are going to identify with your business, it’s critical that you create and champion a strong brand identity. That identify will make your business relatable and recognisable, thereby helping your partners to build an authentic connection.

Creating and championing a powerful brand is no easy task, though. You’ll need to engage your marketing department and make sure that your customer-facing teams understand how to bring your brand to life.

As well as a strong strategy and sense of motivation, you’ll also need the appropriate tools to succeed. A great PX platform can help you to share the right messages at the right time. This can amplify your brand and your messaging to forge stronger links between you and your partners.

  1. Achieve faster and more effective communication

In today’s fast-moving business environment, information is everything. It’s absolutely critical that you provide your partners with timely and relevant updates that they can use to move their business forwards.

If you have an important product update, for instance, you’ll need to share it so that your partners can leverage it to their own ends. This can help you to upsell new products and enhance overall customer satisfaction.

Sharing that information isn’t easy, though. Your customers might have conflicting preferences in terms of communication channels, for instance, and you can’t be sure that your announcements will be seen.

The best PX platforms make it simple for you to share posts in a timeline format with your partners. You can use the PX platform to share posts in a variety of formats like announcements, articles, surveys and more. This functionality means that you can make yourself heard and provide your partners with the information they need.

Create Your PX Platform Today

Are you ready to invest in a leading PX platform to unlock all of the benefits above? Learn more about Follco today and how our PX platform can help you to deliver exceptional brand, partner and reseller experiences.

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