Partner relationship management is an incredibly important tool for strengthening your relationships with each member and developing solid relationships for business growth. Most partner relationships begin as novice relationships– meaning less than 10% of revenue is generated from this group. These relationships are essentially how you get your foot in the door with the company.
Once you have established what would be called a novice relationship for at least two to three months, it may be time to move on to develop something further. One of the best ways you can practice partner management is by openly communicating with the client. Get the company executives involved and develop a specific plan that will get the partner more engaged with your company.
Once you have strengthened your partnership with the company, you should be at the next stage. The stage following novice partnerships is identified by 10-30% of sales coming from that partner. This is definitely a solid partnership, but most companies will want to develop from here as well. In this situation, the partner management system established earlier should apply here as well, only the methods will be much more advanced.
To develop this partner relationship even further, it would be wise to utilize the industry classification benchmark system to fully analyze the lucrative potential of the partnership. Usually, a framework for new programs is developed from here to keep the partner’s attention and interest in your products.
Your partner management system is a great way to easily apply specific techniques when a partnership isn’t at the status you currently want it to be. For example, if you see high potential in a particular partner, partner relationship management is key to developing this relationship to earn more from them than you are currently. If a client makes up 30-80% of your overall profits, this partner is considered reliant and should be expected to be a consistent client with your company.
Of course, you always have the opportunity to develop this further using the partner management system, but this should be put off a little longer to not seem too aggressive toward the company. Once a client is generating more than half of your company’s revenue, partner relationship management starts to become more and more important to keeping all of the affairs in line and keeping the partner satisfied at this level.
To obtain the final level of partnership, your partner relationship management system should focus on organizing the transactions currently made with the customer and focus on delivering better service instead of introducing new products. The highest level of partnership you should hope for is when a partner generates approximately 80% of your revenue.
At this point, your partner management system should make business and transactions easier on the part of the partner. For example, market new products and services to the partner personally so they don’t have to you. You can also let them be the first to know about certain projects and offer special treatment that makes them feel like a valued partner of your company. Get the whole company involved in the partnership, so everyone can be aware and active in finalizing transactions and keeping everything in order.
Partner management is a skill that takes a tremendous amount of effort and a lot of trial and error. However, you should be able to use your personal discretion to determine when the best time to move forward is and how to apply the partner management system described. All of these ideas together will help you develop the partnership you would ideally like to create.
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