What Is The Secret To Building a Successful Partner/Channel Sales Community?

I get asked a bit on LinkedIn on tips of building a partner/channel community in Southeast Asia.

From my experience, there isn't any magic to building one, and is more a combination of science and art which requires more relationship building than selling itself.

Why go through partners when the Internet allows one to reach directly to the customer? The main reason is that these partners have developed a relationship with the customer where the customer will just buy from one partners.

The direct method means the customers will have to work with many vendors which can be hassle. Thus the customer might rather appoint just one partner to deal with all the vendors.

The science of partner sales is in the numbers. Most partners earn from the margin or discount they get from the vendor and they very from company to company. Some margins can be huge while others can be comparatively smaller.

When the margin is small, the alternative for the partner is to earn on Professional Services or known as PS in the tech industry.  The PS includes installation of the system and maintenance of the system.

Most vendors would like their partners to perform the PS to the customers as it means the vendors require less resource while the partners earn from the PS. The customer, having already a close relationship with the partner, will further trust the partner in the maintenance and upkeep of the system.

It is, therefore, the responsibility of the vendor to prepare the partner to sell and provide PS through training. The smaller vendors would often provide this training for free, while the bigger players will charge the partner a fee to attend the training.

As such, the more money the vendor can help the partner make, the more the partner would want to sell your product.

In rare occurrence, the margin may not be the deciding factor and the partner may just want to associate themselves with the brand because it brings them other advantages.

The science is about the money equation, so what about the art?

The art is in the building the relationship with the partner which is sometimes hard to define.

The old school relationship building is going for drinks with the partner. However, today's building relationship could be as simple as being there for your partners.

For example, if your partner ask you a question, you should try to respond to it immediately or at least within a 3 hour time period.

If you do not have the answer and require some time to look for it, respond to acknowledge that you received the message and is will respond when you get the answer.

It could also be working closely with your partner to do some sort of marketing event to the partners' customers to get them interested in purchasing your solution.

Or it could be a simple act of ensuring that your partner is well taken care off during the vendor's offsite event.

There is no magic to building a successful partner/channel sales, but hard work is required to make it a successful one, regardless of your size as a vendor.