THE THREE THINGS PARTNERS VALUE

This is Part-Time Genius Blog on how to grow your business in a profitable and sustainable way.

This blog covers second of the seven key takeaways from my presentation at the Vendep Capital SaaS Channel breakfast. Stay tuned for the remaining six tips. 

See and share the previous tip on how to Create Partner Business Model Fit.

WHAT – ONE ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH, YOU NEED THEM ALL

Back at F-Secure when I had a chance to closely work with Juha Ollila, a true channel business champion, he introduced a set of simple attributes partners value and which have a direct impact to the success of the business relationship. 

1. Great products. Your products don't have to be the best in the category (sure it helps if you have) but they should be on par with the competition at least.
2. Good margin. Partner is for money and the business case has to make sense. The margin is not the only incentive. Moreover, you should consider how to help partner minimize his costs.   
3. Ease of doing business with. Partner gladly builds the relationship with a reliable, respecting and respectful person, and company. Make sure it is you.

As any good rule, this is easy to grasp but it can be demanding to implement.

SO WHAT: IS PARTNER WILLING TO INVEST IN YOU?

That's the key question you should ask by measuring the quality of actions on each of the three value attributes.

Here investment equals to time, efforts, people, and money partner would need to invest in the relationship with your company. It must have positive ROI and break-even should be fast. 

For the sake of fairness, this is a two-way street and you have to make the similar evaluation concerning the partner you are about to sign. We'll cover that topic in the forthcoming blogs.

Let's consider the following - in the eyes of the partner, there are three scenarios:

1. "No go" - you are clearly behind the competition in two of the three attributes and one is not enough to compensate that. 
2. "Roughly right" - even if the value proposition is not perfect, the value of the two compensate for the low value attribute. 
3. "Where can I sign?" - value is balanced over the three attributes and the overall value is considered to be significantly higher than the sum of three individual attributes. Partner sees a compelling business case to move on with you.

Maintaining outside-in perspective is healthy as your business grows only when the partner grows.

Theory aside - what does it take to get there?

NOW WHAT: TEST AND TRIM THE THREE VALUE ATTRIBUTES

Start by understanding where you are with the value. Depending on the company, you might have already measured partner satisfaction and you have quality data available. 

Numbers can tell you something about it but the easiest way is to visit the partner - you should do it anyway. 

Ask the partner to review the three value attributes with you, dare use "five why's" to get to root causes (be they positive or negative), and co-design the "solution" with the partner.  

Finally, execution is what makes the difference. You have to deliver the improvements. Then cycle starts again by you measuring the impact with the partner.

Like always, if you think this is relevant to your business performance and you should do something about it, give me a call or send an email.

PS. Partners will definitely value your efforts and by doing this, you are already strengthening the "Ease of doing business" attribute in a very concrete way.

Cheers Pekka