Recruiting new partners for a new program should be a four phased approach:

1.) Survey current & prospect partners

2.) Build a partner program which includes everything from benefits & requirements to training and incentive programs.

3.) Recruiting new partners.

4.) Enabling new partners to succeed.

Though each step is essential to building a healthy partner program, steps 3 & 4 may be the most important; when recruitment and enablement are done poorly (or not done at all), they can be the downfall of the entire channel later on down the line.

So how do you go about making your recruitment practice a success? I have a few tips, which I list below, but I also turned to a recruitment expert and Channel Maven partner, Tim Evans of Carpenter Consultancy LLC, to get his advice on how to create lasting recruitment success.

Keep Your Recruitment Bar High

If you’re just starting to ramp up your partner program or are ushering in a new wave of recruits, don’t set the bar low so that you get more sign-ups at a low caliber. Remember, it’s harder to weed out inactive and subpar partners once they’ve entered your program than to just filter them out from the start. So, when you’re looking at a new application from your partners, be sure that the partner fits into your business model and that they are tapped into your customer base. You should also make sure that the partner is the right size for your business.

Before On Boarding a New Partner, Test Their Commitment

I can’t stress the importance of testing your partner’s commitment to your products before on-boarding them. Some programs might test the partner’s knowledge of your product before they are permitted to resell the product, that works, but another idea is to see if your prospective partner will attend a 30-minute introductory webinar prior to training (which they will be quizzed on)

If you’re wonder if this is too much for a prospective partner to be doing initially, ask yourself if you believe that a partner who can’t attend a 30-minute introductory webinar will be able to attend a 2-hour partner training session. Will they update your products in a timely way on their website? Or will they just add your products to their site…then slowly vanish into the background like Humphrey Bogart on that famous runway in Casablanca.

However, you also want to show patience on your end. It’s more important to find a few strongly committed individuals in a company and go from there. “Try not to boil the ocean,” says Tim Evans. “Yes, you need a commitment but you will not get all the sales people bought in at once.  A push from management will help accelerate the process, but a good approach is to set your sites on making a few sales people successful selling your product. Once this is accomplished then the remaining fence sitters will follow the scent of commissions.”

Set Expectations for Success

Place your partners on a probation period from day one. Most partners who are engaged with your products within the first 3-6 months of on-boarding typically remain engaged throughout the duration of the program. Communicate standards of success to them and set an evaluation date for renewal. Evaluation dates can be communicated through a renewal certificate, business plan requirement or even a sales evaluation certificate, the important thing is not to leave your relationship open-ended. Also, it’s important not to think of it as a lack of trust in your partners, think of it as a way to test the health of your program. Just as you would get a physical when you’re healthy, so goes your partner program.

To make sure that the partner and the vendors have the same expectations for the program recruitment expert Tim Evans suggests setting specific milestones to help both parties. He says, “I would add that setting specific milestones helps both parties. Remember a partner who signs up is expecting the promise of the product/technology to be fulfilled.  The setting of the clear milestones will make sure everyone is putting the pieces in place to the common goal (lots of sales!).  If you product has a long lead time to close but a big pay off,  then it is important to map this out so the reseller does not become disenchanted with the sales process.”

Make Training Mandatory for all Partners

Education is empowering. Keep your partners engaged by offering free webinars to them that focus on retraining, communicating information about new products and also celebrate partners who are performing well.

In your business plans with the partner, you may want to require the partner to attend (or watch a recorded session of) at least 3 partner-focused webinars over the next 6 months as part of their partner training and renewal agreement. This will help assure that your partner is in-touch, communicative and engaged throughout the first 6 months of his partnership with your company.