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Critical mistakes in channel partner enablement

3rd December 2021 Print
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Working with channel partners opens your business up to some risks but it can also open your business up to major potential as well. If you are going to work with channel partners, you probably should consider partner enablement tools to help you work together. 

Some companies jump right into a channel partner relationship. It’s perfectly ok to use a channel partner to help your business with sales but you also should know how to do it right. 

Take a look at these critical mistakes to avoid in channel partner enablement. 

Choose Your Partners Wisely

When you connect with channel partners, you are using an outside group to help you with sales. It’s important that if you are going to let these outsiders into your world, you use someone you can trust. 

Unfortunately, too many businesses out there don’t do any research or even vetting processes before they just hire a partner. Then they get locked into a contract and disappointed. 

Take the time to do a little bit of due diligence and make sure you are using a channel partner that you can trust. You also may want to require a trial period so that you get the chance to know each other before you are tied to them. This gives you the opportunity to determine if it’s really a great fit or not. 

Don’t Just Set Them Loose

It’s easy to get past that initial cautious phase and simply let down your guard. You know what we mean, that period where you start to feel relaxed and like everything is going great. But what if it’s not? 

This team most likely has access to quite a bit of your information through your partner enablement tools. While there is a certain level of trust that is perfectly ok, you still need to be mindful that things could go wrong or there may be one bad individual in the team of partners. 

It’s a good idea to incorporate some sort of process for monitoring and evaluating your partners. This keeps both sides accountable and allows you to pinpoint problems should they occur. 

Allow that trust to build but don’t just completely let down your guard and never check or follow up afterward. 

Prepare the Partner

If you want your partners to be successful, you’ve got to prepare them with the appropriate tools. A lot of businesses make the mistake of giving their partners outdated information or not really giving them the tools and information that they actually need. 

In order for your channel partner to be successful, they need the information and connections to be so. If you’re going to use a tool, then you need to use it right. Give your partners updated and accurate information so they can do what they do best. 

These people are working to help you make sales so give them the tools that they need to really be successful in doing so. 

Collaborate

You can totally just hire a channel partner and then never work closely with them. But it would be far more effective to collaborate together. They are your partners and it is a critical mistake to not treat them as such. 

Partners collaborate. They work as a team for the good or towards a common goal. In this case, your goal is sales. If you bring in a partner and then just toss them in the background, you won’t achieve anything most likely. 

Collaborating unites the outside party with the inside parties and brings everyone to a common focus or goal so that you can ultimately achieve your goals in the end. 

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