The benefits of a channel partnership are vast, but without an effective way to manage partnerships, you’re missing out on a gold mine of value for you business. Partners are often managing multiple vendors, and they expect an effortless experience with access to instant information, personalization, and one-to-one engagement. It’s critical to partner success and sales growth that you meet their expectations so they can focus on selling your product or service.

A partner community creates a transparent bridge between two companies, combining joint business planning, shared pipeline, shared analytics, shared resources, and more, all in one easily accessible, fully mobile location.

The right partner community spans the entire partner lifecycle, from recruitment and education, to co-marketing and co-selling, to analysis. Check out the free e-book to learn more.

Recruit: According to Channel Insider, the average channel partner signs on with 2-3 new vendor programs per year. That means you aren’t the only one vying for partner attention. Consider scorecards to ensure that each prospective partner is targeted based on the same criteria, and that the same scale is used for evaluation across all prospects.

Educate: The more educated a partner is, the more likely they are to sell and become evangelists of your product or solution. A partner community enables efficient onboarding and learning by providing easy access to training modules and certification tools. The entire training process can be automated, easily guiding your new partners at every step to boost engagement.

Co-Market: The right partner community makes it easy to jointly manage marketing development funds, budget for campaigns and track co-marketing ROI. The ability to track how your marketing funds are used brings transparency to both businesses.

Co-Sell: When lead data from your partners are integrated and synchronized with your CRM, the community becomes a crucial piece of the core selling process. The community can also be the hub of sales content like whitepapers, e-books and presentations, so reps only need to look in one place to get everything they need. Collaborate easily within the community for faster lead approval, management, and distribution in a way that is transparent and fair.

Service: Nothing is more detrimental to a partner relationship than not giving partners the support they need. Partners need a single portal or source to contact product professionals for help and support. With a partner community it’s easier than ever to connect with experts to close deals — no need to try to track down a email or phone number.

Analyze: Creating a sales process grounded in data and numbers requires transparency and communication among partners. Consider sales dashboards as they allow leaders to review key metrics like an updated pipeline, deal forecasts, team quota numbers, and performance by individual reps, so every person is working with the most up-to-date numbers.