6.
5.
Ensure your partner ecosystem elements — programs, incentives, and marketing
— are relevant to each partner phase and structured to support the journey. Be
sure to develop:
Bring it all together:
Ensure your partner ecosystem elements
support the partner journey
Supportive partner ecosystem elements:
Partner programs, enablement, cultivated relationships, marketing,
incentives, management structures, and other components should be
structured to allow movement down the partner journey.
A focus on how partners will move from one phase to the next
within each element:
For instance, early in the recruitment and activation stage your incentives
may focus on transactions. Whereas in the investment phase, those
incentives might focus on growth or solution expansion. Similarly, early
enablement might focus on solution-selling techniques and customer
profiles, whereas more mature partners may need enablement on industry-
specific scenarios.
Strong partner relationship management and partner marketing tools:
Be sure that program elements are coordinated with and through these
tools. Impartner provides a level of personalization that cultivates an
unmatched digital partner experience to help attract and retain high-
performing ecosystem partners.
Use common sense to keep devoted partners. Stay out of your own way and let
partners drive scale. Be sure to develop:
Encourage devotion:
Use common sense
A sense of trust:
Don't break the trust you've built with your partner by taking their deals
direct. You should have clear rules of engagement and ensure everyone in
your organization abides by them.
An eye for competitor poaching:
Be careful you're not breaking your partner's trust and giving them a reason
to look for relationships elsewhere.
A truly mutually beneficial relationship:
Consider including them in roadmap or private preview activities. Continue
with the partner advisory councils and other partner engagement
opportunities. Make sure they feel part of your solution. For example, some
of the best companies in the industry now pay representatives for selling
their partner's solutions into their clients. Vendors recognize that third-party
solutions help make their product stick and likely increase the consumption
of their offerings.
