When you ask most channel marketing professionals what their biggest challenge is I’d guess more than half would say “getting our partners to successfully market our solutions”.  I know I struggled with it during my days at EMC and EqualLogic.  How do you get partners to only focus on your relationship and more importantly how do you get them to do marketing when it’s the furthest thing from their comfort zone?

UBM Tech Channel recently asked us to partner on a project to help manufacturers better enable their partners.  The main thesis is that no two partners have the same resource constraints, marketing/sales know-how and desire to leverage marketing best practices.  Through this study we came up with designations for partners including:

• Marketers which include Loyalists and Hyper-marketers
  • Loyalists:  Usually marketer with only one or two vendors
  • Hyper-marketers:  You name the marketing tactic they’ve tried it
• Sales Marketers which include Classic and Contemporary marketers:
  • Classic Marketers:  Organizations that focus their marketing activities on more sales tactics i.e. sell sheets, cold calls
  • Contemporary Marketers:  Organizations that focus their marketing on sales activities that are more progressive including LinkedIn connections and email marketing.
• Non-marketers
  • Transitional:  These are organizations that don’t do much in the way of marketing today but realize they need to and are looking to start dipping their toe into marketing.
  • Skeptics:  These are organizations aren’t really interested in marketing activities and believe their business will be fine nursing the same stagnant growth.

To the right is a breakdown of who these partners really are and where they fit.  Look like some partners you may know?  It’s pretty clear where each of these partners does well and where they may need a little help.  How are you helping these partners today?

So based upon your partners’ current designation, what do they need?  Below is a rough overview of what your partners may need.  One thing you’ll notice right away is that no one designation requires the same level of assistance or resources from you.

How can you get all of this done without breaking the bank?  Leverage scalable elements from each so you aren’t creating a custom experience for each and every partner.  Questions?  We’re happy to chat anytime.  Have you experienced these types of partners or any that we missed?

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