Having channel partners for your business is a boon to your business, as not every organization has the privilege of having supporters for their brand.

Although we primarily consider sales and marketing partners as the most integral ones, every channel partner has a unique role to play in your business’ success.

Therefore, it is crucial to understand channel partners’ role and appreciate their contributions and achievements in publications like blogs, eBooks, newsletters, company journals, and more.

Why Are Channel Partners important?

For many businesses, channel partners are the bridge between customers and employees, and the strength of the bridge is only as strong as the foundations.

If you leave the bridge unattended, it is likely to collapse and do a lot of collateral damage alongside.

So, how do you keep this bridge strong? By engaging your channel partners. How can you do that? By highlighting their contributions and achievements and any or all business literature, you publish online.

Believe it or not, channel partners also have a significant impact on employee engagement. So, the better the symbiotic relationship between partners and business, the more robust the foundations of enterprise engagement will be.

Are You Doing Enough to Maintain a Strong Channel Partner Association?

When it comes to channel partners, you often ask your teams if they are talking about your brand. Now, it is not a question that hits the table for brands that actively support each other. But if either of the parties is not doing their part, the strategic relationship often breaks down.

Brand collaborations should never be a difficult task. Instead, it should be a proud partnership where you both work together to find new and innovative ways to increase sales and build the brand.

It is a two-way association; the higher the level of engagement between the brands, the higher will be the returns; and more vital will be the brand’s position in the market.

How Does it Work?

Now that you have a clear understanding of channel partners’ importance, it is time to find out how you can create an influential channel partner culture in your organization. Let’s start.

Recruit Them:
Have a clear idea of what you expect from your channel partner. And, how they will help strengthen your brand in the near future.

Find out how well your partner’s sales and marketing strategies will be aligned with your own. Analyze the pros and cons of your partnership only recruit them if there is no channel conflict.

Enable Them:
Once you have the right channel partners on board, help them reduce the time needed to become your productive partner.

Start by engaging them through different publications and expect them to do the same. Do not focus on what they are obligated to do, instead focus on giving them the necessary support to help move things in the right direction.

You must enable them optimally as soon as possible and train them if needed to increase efficacy.

Reward Them:
Managing your channel partners and giving them the resources they need is a small part of what you should do to maintain stable relationships.

Simple margins will not cut it, and you need to implement non-monetary reward and recognition programs to keep them interested in the partnership.

Publish an eBook and mention your channel partner in it. Highlight how they can help the end-user with the issues discussed in the eBook and ask your partners to share the book ahead.

Such creative rewards go a long way when taking on partner engagement activities, and it adds more value to your brand.

Benefits of Highlighting Partner Achievements

Now the next concern you might have is will such an arrangement benefits your organization? Yes, it will.

How? Let’s find out more about it in the following lines:

Improved Sales:

Selling directly can be challenging, but with a strong channel partner program, you can scale up your sales activities more efficiently.

You can bring in multiple channel partners with a fixed arrangement for a fraction of the cost of hiring new sales representatives. Moreover, it is easier to work with existing sales partners than training a new team.

Easier Market Penetration:

Channel partners are a great way to expand the business into uncharted territories. They reduce the spending to penetrate the market using traditional strategies.

This is especially true when it comes to expanding business in international markets. Small and middle-sized companies can now get both the expertise and resources through strategic partnerships.

Better Resolution of Customer Issues:

It is tough to find the right combination of products and services to catch up with your customers’ issues. However, partnerships can offer you both without having to spend extra on developmental costs.

They help you increase your range of products and services without investing more time. And when both you and your partner are highlighting each other’s achievement in your respective posts, you increase the chances of boosting each other’s sales.

Better Reach With Recognized Brands:

Increasing your marketing campaigns’ reach becomes much more comfortable with elevated content that highlights the strengths of you and your partners.

Leveraging channel partners’ relationships, you can work together to gain more exposure, create brand awareness, generate more qualified leads, and improve the revenue.

Reduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC):

One of the major concerns of any marketing is continually rising CAC. Investing in strong channel partners helps you reduce CAC dramatically.

To make things even better, return on partner programs allows you to invest your resources optimally and ensure business viability without adding additional staff.

Wrapping Up

Creating new channel partners is a strategy for the future. Now, you can easily manage these associations using robust engagement tools.

NextBee offers a wide range of engagement solutions in simple out-of-the-box products that effectively engage your partners and customers.

To know more about NextBee’s comprehensive engagement solutions, get in touch with our team of experts. We offer free consultation and help you kickstart engagement programs that improve ROI and strengthen strategic partnerships.