Partner Enablement – the Key to a Successful Indirect Go-to-Market Strategy

To run a successful indirect Go-To-Market strategy, you must enable your partners through all stages of the product cycle. From pre-sales to post-sales, provide the necessary tools to keep your partners happy and effectively administer for your customers.

Why Are Your Partners Producing Far Less Than Expected?

Selling through the channel can be the most rewarding or painful aspect of your GTM strategy.  When a partner takes on the promise of representing your products and brands, it is your responsibility to ensure that they are thoroughly trained and enabled to be successful in the marketplace.  Partner enablement is the key to understanding your partner's business and how your products integrate into their offering.   No matter if you have selected your partners to help open new verticals, geographies or to fulfill in smaller markets – they all need to be properly enabled.

Understand What the Best of Breed Companies Are Doing With Their Partners to Succeed:

For those of you who sell through channel partners, the key to a successful go-to-market strategy comes via partner enablement. Your partners need the right support, tools, and processes to best express your product’s value proposition and sell to the right customers. In order to provide this enablement to your partners, you must understand your product’s maturity and the goals of your partner program.

Understanding Your Product Life Cycle Phase – Where You Can Enable Your Partners:

For those using partner programs to reach new markets with new products, it’s important to provide necessary pre-sales enablement to ensure your partners know the product's unique selling proposition. Essential steps in the pre-sales enablement process will include product training, lead generation, and your unique selling proposition.

If your partners sell a mature product and act as fulfillment, providing post-sales enablement will also be necessary to ensure they are successfully providing for your customers. This enablement aspect will focus more on installation, product training, and customer success.

Pre-Sales Enablement – help your partners get your products in the customer’s hands.

1. Product Training:

   • Enabling your partners to sell to a new market starts with providing the right product resources, technical information, and tools necessary for your partners to understand your products and the problems it solves.

2. Ideal Customer Profile:

   • Once you’ve provided your partners with the right tools to pitch your products, the next step is to outline the ideal customer profile for them. It’s necessary that your partners understand who your solution fits and targets the right customers with your product to create a lasting relationship.

3. Buyer Personas:

   • One of the last steps in pre-sales enablement for your reps is helping to build buyer personas and establish a selling plan for common buyers at the customer level. Understand each of these individuals' needs and barriers to buying to help your partners sell to them more effectively.

4. Unique Selling Proposition:

   • In tandem with product training, your partners must understand the unique selling proposition of your solution.

5. Lead Generation:

   • After outlining your ideal customer profile, you must go downstream to bring the right end-user leads to your partners. Being a part of the sales process and bringing leads to your channel reps can help ensure your products are winning mindshare and at the forefront of your partner’s priorities.

Post-Sales Enablement – make sure your partners can fulfill orders and ensure customer success:

1. Installation and Technical Support:

   • To maximize the probability of your customers buying again or renewing, you must provide necessary technical support and installation tools to your distributors. Ensuring all systems or products run smoothly and are integrated helps your partners guarantee their success and in so doing, your success.

2. Training on Product Usage:

   • Once your partners have sold and fulfilled your products, provide the necessary resources to train customers on using your products effectively, and to solve their respective problems.

3. Customer Support:

   • All products will inevitably have technical difficulties. Providing the right tools to support customers when they do and quickly resolve issues builds loyalty and will keep end-users and partners alike happy.

Providing revenue enablement for your partners throughout the sales process will help them make their number, and in turn, will keep your products at the top of their mindshare. Ensure you’re providing the right resources for the right lifecycle stage of your product to guarantee a successful indirect Go To Market strategy.