You’ve probably heard about the Give First mindset in #partnerships.
It boils down to 3 key concepts:
⚡️ unlock, invest and accelerate.
🎯 Unlock
There is no way around this.
You need to get into your potential partner's shoes and think “how my product or service can help them unlock a new stream of revenue or increase retention, for example”.
Or why partnering with you may get them closer to a strategic objective, like testing a new customer segment?
If this is a major unlock for them, you’ll feel a strong pull from a partner.
Whatever the reason, it should be compelling enough for your partner to put on the line trust that they have built with their customers.
💎 Invest
You’ll find a channel partner, persuade them to sell your product and they create a new stream of revenue for you overnight. You probably already know that it's wishful thinking.
Even if it’s a great unlock for them, in the beginning your partnerships require investments.
You need to teach them how your product works, how to sell, integrate and do customer support. Typically this happens before you see first revenue.
But if you make a handful of partners successful, you can later scale the program with a more hands-off templated approach.
If it takes time and investment, how to get to results faster?
🚀 Accelerate
Easier: help partners to generate demand with joint marketing, SMM, events, etc.
Harder: shadow your first deals closely and treat first joint customers as if they were your own deals. This will speed up the process quite substantially.
On the first deals, you may be working harder than they are, and you pay them commissions on top of that.
Sounds completely illogical. At this stage, you might be asking yourself: why bother with #channelpartners?
💡 Because when the program begin to work, you’d be able to leverage what your partners are UNIQUELY able to do that you can’t.
Long-term, partners can extend your sales and services and help to scale your (SaaS) business MUCH faster and cost efficiently than you'd do it on your own.