“Focus on great-fit partners and that are truly trying to grow with the solutions that you offer. “Don’t try to boil the ocean and be everyone’s partner,” she says. Rackspace Global Partner Manager Vicki Patten agrees. “Be selective about the partners you’re onboarding,” he says. Steve Braverman, Founding Partner for EagleTEQ Advisors, stresses the importance of this process. Think of them like buyer personas your marketing team develops for retail customers, but instead of helping you target the right accounts for your services, they help you find the right partners to distribute your services. There’s even shorthand for modeling them – they’re called IPPs, or ideal partner profiles. And as we’ve discussed many times in our blogs, webinars and other discussions, finding the right partner for your company is essential to developing a successful partnership. There’s a reason they’re called channel “partners.” Working with them means establishing business partnerships that help both firms succeed. Before we dig into those, here are three tips to help you set up your engagement program for success: TIP #1: Target the Right Channel Partners for Your Company To help put that into a timeline, we asked those same experts to break down a successful engagement program into steps at the following milestones: 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and 12-months-and-onward. They covered everything from the program challenges to re-engaging inactive partners – all good, actionable advice that can help you get your arms around a complex and challenging subject. In our most recent column detailing partner engagement best practices, we turned to a panel of partner engagement experts and asked them to share some of their best insights for increasing program stickiness. And it’s essential to building those big revenue engines that make the channel such a powerful tool for growth. Keeping partners engaged is what long-term channel success is all about, after all.

It stands to reason that increasing your partner engagement program’s stickiness can help you keep a steady stream of partner revenue flowing. At 12 months and onward, you’re celebrating a successful partnership and keeping the relationship refreshed and renewed through ongoing communication, regular meetings and goal alignment.

At the 90-day mark, you’ll be making refinements with partners where needed, starting up your quarterly business reviews (QBRs), and helping your partners go to market with your solutions more extensively.

60 days into your plan, you’ll be educating customers and helping them start to sell your solutions.

In the first 30 days, you and your partner will learn about each other – including the value you can deliver your partners via incentives – and set goals.

Partner engagement requires that asset- and partner-enablement processes are in place.

Make sure you’ve got what you need to drive engagement.

Different partners may require different engagement processes. Make sure you’re targeting best-fit partners upfront.

No partner engagement plan can generate long-term results with a partner that isn’t a fit for your company and its services.

Channel partner engagement is both essential to – and a reflection of – the strength of your partner relationships.

30 60 90 sales plan powerpoint template