My last blog about partnerships was focused on creating a partnership program and best practices to get started (you can view that blog here: https://bluemarblepayroll.com/starting-partnership-program ). Today, I will discuss challenges that you can face when working with partners, along with some best practices to improve your partnership program.
If you’ve identified the best partnerships to bring value to your prospects and clients, signed partner agreements, and several months later you haven’t figured out why things aren’t working, here are the top 10 challenges and ways to get back on track or improve your partner relationships:
- You aren’t getting any traction or referrals from your partners: This could be for many reasons but oftentimes it’s a matter of training and spending time with your partner teams to help them understand your value proposition so they can recognize what is and what is not a good fit for your services. The same goes for your team and learning more about your partners.
- You are getting asked for a “quote” or “best price”: Everyone knows these requests are not the ideal situation and you won’t be winning very many of these deals. Going back to spending time with the training of the partner team and setting proper expectations, they will understand and most likely see a quick turnaround and fewer of these requests.
- Lack of communication: If you or your team haven’t been out in front of your partner’s team on a regular basis, they may have forgotten about you! Make it a standard practice to have regular contact or pick up the phone instead of sending emails. Better yet, send a hand written thank you card – a simple gesture goes a long way!
- Get out of the office and visit partners in person if possible: These face to face meetings can be instrumental to building trust and credibility. Break down the barriers with your partners – the more they trust you and see you or your team as a credible resource to them and their clients/prospects, the more they will reach out to you.
- Send updates to both sides (especially leadership) when a deal is won or lost: It’s nice to share what is and is not working. Regular updates also provide more visibility, especially with the mutual “wins”.
- Be a trusted resource: Find ways to help your partners – the more you help them, the more they will want to work with you. Maybe it’s something as simple as providing contact information to an account they are working on but isn’t relevant to you. Put your partners first and they will rely on you as a resource.
- Process: I hear about process quite often, or I am asked about how we manage our process. Make sure you have a defined process in place for both sides of the partnership and communicate the process details regularly, so when there is a referral you don’t waste time trying to figure out what to do or where to go. An established process will make things timelier on both sides.
- Prioritization of partnerships: This was a big challenge for me when I started, knowing where to prioritize, chasing down partnerships that weren’t a fit or would not provide value. Focus on having a smaller number of partners and working to make those successful. You can create a tier system, or rank them according to your own metrics to help you determine where to spend your time. Like many other things in life, sometimes less is more.
- Working with many stakeholders in the organization, both internally and externally: It can be challenging to balance the need to work with sales, service, leadership, technical, and others within your organization and possibly your partner’s organization while measuring what is or isn’t successful. Similar to prioritizing your partnerships, you will need to prioritize your contacts within each organization to ensure you are spending time with the partner contacts that make the most sense for your partnership.
- Be easy to work with: This might sound simple, but sometimes is not – make sure to reply to emails and phone calls in a timely manner, don’t make partners wait a week or more to speak with you to get an appointment, go above and beyond when you can, and be nice. Everyone is busy with their own priorities, but being polite goes a long way. You would be amazed how much a few simple gestures can make your partnerships more effective. The little things make the big differences.
If partnerships are a new concept for your organization, or if you’ve been working with partners for a long time, there are always challenges you will face. With a little time and effort, you can strengthen your partnerships and create new opportunities for your organization. To learn more about our partnership program, click here.