Today, I want to share a strategy that helped me increase partner revenue by 40%. This strategy was born out of necessity; we were looking for ways to empower our partners and drive more revenue. But this wasn't just any strategy. It's one that works because it leverages the power of face-to-face meetings and in-person interactions — the kind that can transform an ordinary business relationship into an exciting new opportunity for mutual growth and success.
What is Partner Enablement?
Partner enablement is the process of helping your partners succeed. Partner enablement is the practice of supporting your partners with the proper training, materials, and information to execute your sales process and sell your product or service.
It’s a critical component of every tech company's strategy for growing revenue through partner channels, but one that’s often overlooked.. An effective partner enablement program helps you grow revenue with existing customers while enabling new ones to easily become profitable and drive growth for the company's bottom line by leveraging resources more efficiently.
Why Enablement Sessions are Important
Enablement sessions are critical to building a successful partner program. They are the cornerstone of any good partnership, and allow you to increase partner satisfaction, generate revenue, and train and retain strategic partners.
Increase awareness of your products and services
Build trust with your partner’s sales org
Help you generate new revenue from strategic partners
How I built a Partner Enablement Program
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s dive into how you can execute on this strategy at scale. Here are some tips and tactics I used when setting up a successful partner enablement program with my main cloud partner Twilio:
Create a sales kit for your partner that includes all of your content, pricing sheets, etc., so it’s easy for sales reps to present to clients on your behalf.
You don’t need to get too fancy here. This can be simple one-pager, but make sure the information is easy to digest and reiterate. Sales Reps move quick, and they need to be able provide the right info at the right time. Keep it short & sweet.
Contact the Sales Leaders at your partners and ask to join a team meeting.
Do this across every vertical – SMB, Mid Market, and Enterprise – as well as geographies if possible (e.g., US-West, US-Northeast, EMEA, etc.). Your pitch to Sales Leaders is simple: I want to help your team close more deals. In your outreach, your main value prop should sound something like this:
“I’d like to spend 15 mins helping your reps understand our partnership so they can close more deals faster.”
This process requires some advance planning on your part, but it's worth the effort because these presentations will be crucial in building trust with their sales reps—and they'll lead to a massive increase in new leads.
Create a slide deck that you can use during the enablement sessions.
You want to create an engaging presentation on what your company does, why you’re in a partnership together (i.e., solving their pain points), how you can help them sell more and close deals faster than ever before; then invite yourself along once per week/month/quarter depending on how much time you have available or how often they’re willing to have you join their meetings..
Follow-up with Sales Reps after the enablement session, and if possible, schedule 1 on 1 meetings.
This is where you build strong relationships and form trust with your partner’s sellers - which is the most important goal you want to achieve. You want to be the first person they think of when one of their client’s needs a partner.
The Results (after just 8 Months)
What we achieved:
120% increase in qualified leads
40% increase in channel sales
$5m+ new business revenue
The results we achieved for our partner were:
25% decrease in time-to-close for sales reps
20% increase in average contract value (ACV)
10x return on our initial investment (ROI) in 8 months
In just 8 months, we accomplished all of this by providing partner enablement sessions directly with the sales teams, creating awareness, trust and a path to more revenue. I also leveraged these enablement sessions to help Twilio build a stronger go-to-market and sales strategy, which created additional value for both parties.
If you want your partners to thrive, give them a place where they can get help and guidance.
When you or your partners are struggling, it's easy to focus on the tactical parts of the business—like how many leads and deals a partner closed last month. But if you want your partnership to thrive, give your partner a place where they can get help and guidance.
Enablement sessions are an effective way to help new or struggling partners succeed. They provide quick wins that build trust, awareness of your products and services, how-to knowledge for selling our solutions (including tips for closing deals), and much more. Enablement sessions can take place over the phone or in person; some companies even offer webinars as part of their enablement programs.
Conclusion: Focus on Enablement
I hope that this post makes it clear how important partner enablement efforts are. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of running a partnership, but if you want to grow together, you have to invest time and energy into helping your partners. The results speak for themselves: 40% increase in channel sales and $5m+ new partner revenue in less than 8 months.
Comments