Channel Management Best Practices: Recruitment (1/x)

In order to both share my perspective and (perhaps more importantly) to elicit constructive feedback and new ways of thinking, I am writing a series of posts giving my perspective on the best practices of Channel Management.  These are things that I have learned and have implemented with success in my career.  Comments, feedback, disagreements, and additional insights are welcome, if not encouraged.  

This is the first in a series.

Channel Recruitment

The basis of channel recruitment is identifying and successfully recruiting the right channel partners to expand market reach and achieve financial goals. This process is crucial because poor partner selections can lead to significant issues. Motivated and strategically aligned partners are essential for a thriving partner program. Thus, partner selection and recruitment are extremely important to achieving maximum market coverage while minimizing channel conflict.

In order to build a strong channel ecosystem, you must (as they say) “start at the beginning”: Recruitment.  This includes understanding the landscape of your industry, assessing the current position and strategic direction of your company, defining an ideal partner profile, learning to sell appropriate personas on the value of partnering, assessing partner candidates, and preparing an onboarding strategy.

The vital first step is assessing your company’s current state and strategic direction.  This involves understanding your company’s vision, mission, and current / proposed strategies. It's important to know your target market segments as well as any planned changes to them. This assessment also determines whether or not the current partner portfolio can achieve the company's goals.

The next stage is defining your ideal partner -  including the key characteristics, strengths, resources, and expertise they need. Competitive benchmarking is essential to understand competitors' partner types and market coverage. Research your competitors’ partner ecosystems! Recognizing business transformations is also critical, as changes in business strategy or direction will impact partner needs and relevance. Your current partner portfolio must be evaluated to identify gaps in core competencies and alignment. An ideal partner profile should be reviewed and adapted on a regular basis.

Convincing potential partners to join your program involves addressing their needs as much as your own. What is in it for them? Understanding the potential partner’s perspective and how the program can help drive their business is critical.  Partners want market-leading / innovative products, support with demand generation, future demand with mutual customers, minimal channel conflict, and professional enablement in areas like operations, legal, marketing, and sales. Partners also seek ongoing training, easy ways to add value and increase profitability, and good communication. Potential partners will have questions about rewards, performance requirements, compensation, reporting, contractual obligations, resources, and joint business planning.

It is important to target the right individuals, such as CEOs, heads of sales, marketing, alliances, and product development. Different messaging and value propositions should be developed for each "persona". Marketing communication about potential partnerships should include social media, email campaigns, events, public relations, and word-of-mouth. Creating a target list involves data sources like LinkedIn and prioritizing prospects based on desirability and probability of engaging, according to the ideal partner profile. Registrations and applications should be centralized and web-based, with a clear application process.

Assessing candidates should involve meetings where both parties present their vision, expectations, and business opportunities. Early-stage legal and administrative aspects, such as Letters of Intent (LOIs) and Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs), are great ways of outlining the structure of the partnership before finalizing the agreement

In my next installment, I’ll discuss onboarding and enablement...