Channel Partner Experience - Part I: What is it & Why Should you Care?

What is channel partner experience?

Channel partner experience (PX) is the perception of your brand that your partners develop throughout their interactions with you and the technology, assets, and other support you provide them.

PX is a method for establishing and maintaining strong relationships with the partners in your channel network. It involves providing enablement and engagement throughout the partnership with tools and technology that motivate partners to represent your brand accurately and authentically in their markets.

The benefits of investing in channel partner experience

In addition to impacting the longevity of your existing partnerships, a positive channel partner experience is vital to creating new partnerships and building out a more robust channel network. It also significantly contributes to your brand’s customer experience—ultimately impacting sales, customer retention, and the overall ROI of your distributed marketing program.

But the question remains, why should you actively invest in partner experience rather than simply letting it develop organically?

1. It keeps your brand top of mind. Consistent engagement with your partners, through direct contact or notable activity within the portal(s) you’ve provided, will keep your brand offering(s) fresh in your partners’ minds—improving their likeliness to recommend and advocate for it with their customers.
2. It helps better align your offering to partner audiences. Developing your relationship with partners will enable you to leverage their knowledge of customers in their market to better align your offering to their needs and increase the ease of selling.
3. It drives partner loyalty. Providing your partners with tools that enhance their knowledge, offer them incentives, and render support, establishes a partnership that’s more than transactional, which better motivates them to commit to your brand over others in the long run.
4. It opens the door for larger collaboration opportunities. Your most robustly developed partnerships will have generated trust and respect between parties that can support co-branded campaigns and special editions—creating new revenue streams and boosting sales.
5. It attracts and helps to acquire new partners. Consistently delivering an excellent partner experience builds a positive channel reputation and develops partners into program advocates that can generate interest and secure new partnerships to reach new markets.

Positive partner experiences can offer a competitive advantage—both among competing businesses and channel vendors—and boost program ROI to heights that would be difficult to attain with unengaged, unmotivated, and unsatisfied partners.

To be continued . . .

As I’m sure you can tell by the title, this isn’t all there is to know about partner experience. In Channel Partner Experience - Part II: Challenges & How to Do It Right  we cover the less rosy side of PX including the challenges of PX and how you can develop an effective strategy to deliver a positive partner experience.

Click the button below to check out the final installment of this short series