It’s crystal clear that your partner channel is an asset to your company’s overall business revenue number. What’s murkier is the operational process to actually put those dollars in your pocket.
Probably the first word that comes to mind when you talk strategy in growing revenue through the channel is upsell. But not all of your partners are ready to tackle an upsell strategy. By partnering with Gainsight, we’ll walk you through the upsell lifecycle for your partner channel in just two steps:
- Identify your strongest partners.
- Help them distinguish optimal customers to upsell.
1. How to identify strong partners
All of your partners and resellers play an integral role in your company’s overall revenue. However, identifying which partners are consistently driving success for your business could lead you to prime candidates for upselling opportunities.
Which metrics should you consider for choosing strong partners?
Goal Setting: Your first step should be setting goals for your program. Each partner will bring a different skillset to your channel program, but what matters is which partners are most aligned to helping you achieve your primary business goal. Understand your company’s vision for the year and create goals in your channel program that will make you look like a rockstar to the rest of your organization. Once your goals are set, it will be easier to identify which partners help your channel drive business.
Content Engagement: A simple way to measure partner engagement is through content. If your marketing team provides product collateral or sales techniques in your partner portal you can easily see which partners are most engaged. You can also see which partners take advantage of co-branding. Some engagement metrics to consider: clicks and average time on pages.
Sales Certification: Providing training courses or certifications to your partner teams is a good way to get your channel up-to-speed on your product. If the sales reps become familiar with your brand and understand key value props, they’re in a better position to sell on your behalf. Create certification programs in your partner portal and then view which partners are certified and how many reps achieved certification.
Consistently Producing ROI: All partners will bring a different strength to your overall partner program, but a strong indicator of a likely successful upsell strategy is a partner who consistently generates ROI for your business. Use the revenue goals you set earlier in Step 1 to distinguish which partners help you accelerate ROI.
Once you set goals for your partner channel, analyze content engagement from your partners, identify which partner sales teams are staying up-to-date with certifications, and understand which partners consistently produce ROI, you’re ready to pinpoint who’s most equipped to upsell your products.
2. How to identify upsell opportunities
Now that you’ve identified your strongest partners that are most likely to succeed in an upsell strategy, work with them to create a playbook on identifying which customers are strong indicators to buy. Having a defined strategy based on customer usage data will help you succeed and keep you from guessing.
Capitalize on Expansion Opportunities: Work with your strongest partners from Step 1 and analyze metrics like utilization, stage, product adoption or survey responses. These metrics indicate that your partner’s customers find value in the tool and therefore tells you they could be a good candidate for upsell opportunities.
Create a Success Plan: Collaborate to develop a success plan and playbook that will help upsell. Tip: Meet with your organization’s sales team to understand their upselling techniques. This will provide a consistent experience for your partner channel.
Show Value: Create a compelling case as to why customers should buy from you. Show value with user adoption and engagement metrics. If your partner’s customers set goals during the beginning of the relationship, work to identify if they’ve achieved those goals with the help of your product.
Sometimes you need more than an excel spreadsheet with “green = good” and “red = bad.” Understanding your partner engagement data will help you identify which partners are more likely to upsell. Then, analyzing metrics like product usage and user engagement will equip your partners with the right data for an efficient upsell strategy. These techniques will take the guesswork and heavy lifting out of your day and will ultimately help your channel program look like an asset and revenue driver for your overall business.
Looking for help with setting up your foundational data metrics or dashboards for your partner lifecycle and customer success?
About Allbound: Allbound’s next generation partner portal platform simplifies and accelerates a business’s ability to onboard, train, measure, and grow indirect sales partners. The innovative software enables collaboration among channel vendors and their partners to improve the performance of their indirect sales channels by automating the delivery of marketing content, sales tools and training at each stage of the pipeline. For more information, visit www.allbound.com.
