Partnerships in the B2B world can be hugely beneficial to both parties and they come in many forms. But with partnerships come challenges – how can we better enable our partners to articulate our value proposition and sell our products?
In this article I will outline the different types of partners and I’ll discuss how we can enable them with video.
Types of Partnerships
Referral Partnerships: Many software vendors have referral partnerships with advisory firms where they can recommend the vendor’s solutions. If the vendor makes a sale from a qualified lead that was brought to them from a referral partner, the partner will most likely receive a percentage commission on that sale.
Reseller Partnerships (Software Vendor): Another type of reseller is where another software vendor sells your products on your behalf. This is likely to be a much larger vendor who can sell your solution as an add-on to their own offering.
Reseller Partnerships (Other): For non-vendor reseller partnerships such as if your product is utilised by Business Process Outsourcers for back-office functions, a reseller agreement can be created for them to resell your product to be utilised by their clients.
The Challenge
Regardless of the type of partner, they all have something in common; they all need to be able and willing to recommend your products to their clients.
For partners to want to promote your product, they need to be convinced that your solution will bring value to their clients. As mentioned above, there will likely be a financial incentive too. In my experience, they want a simple process to be able to recommend your products – they need solid enablement to make this as frictionless as possible.
Partners also need to be able to recommend your products successfully. Channel partners must demonstrate they have the expertise required to recommend solutions that fit the specific needs of their clients. They need to be able to articulate the value proposition of your products.
This is where Partner Enablement comes in. Without a good enablement strategy, it can be difficult to ensure your channel can fully articulate the benefits of your products. Furthermore, it can be challenging to track and monitor the success of their efforts.
The Solution
This is where trackable video can be utilised as a part of a wider partner enablement strategy. If you give your partners the video resources to send to their clients, there is less reliance on them recalling your product’s value drivers. With the perfect video that covers the value and perhaps even a high-level demonstration of your software, there is less risk of the prospects not fully understanding the benefits.
Furthermore, by utilising a video platform that can track views and who has viewed it in real-time, your partners can build a better stakeholder map within their clients as your videos get shared.
The final piece of the puzzle is you being able to track the efforts and success of your partner channel. With a fully trackable video platform, you can see which of your partners are sharing certain videos, and then which of their clients or prospects are engaging with the videos.