Partner Recruiting: What It Is and How To Do It

Quoted on this wiki

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1. Half the partners in your portal are inactive. “Partners sign up for MDFs and never use them.” You’ve got 200 partners but only get one good lead per quarter.

   In Channel and reseller partners

2. “Most partner program problems are actually partner recruiting problems.” Half the partners in your portal are inactive.

   In Partner recruitment

3. You’ve got 200 partners but only get one good lead per quarter. “Yep, they all stem from partner recruiting.” But recruiting the right partners isn’t so simple.

   In Partner recruitment

4. Partners sign up for MDFs and never use them. “You’ve got 200 partners but only get one good lead per quarter.” Yep, they all stem from partner recruiting. Get the right partners on board, and the right publicity, customer support, and revenue will come.

   In Partner recruitment

5. Why? Because it shows partners that you’re investing in the partnership. And perhaps more importantly, it can be a relatively easy win — in B2B SaaS or other industries with long sales cycles, it’s not likely you’ll get a ton of deals right away. “We simply tailor those content pieces to the partner, reference the awesome things they’re doing, and use it to explain our better-together story.” Partners feel honored to be interviewed about their expertise, making them more willing to promote and share. And if the content turns out well, they will likely reciprocate with their own comarketing ideas — maybe even in a different format like ads or events.

   In Co-branded content

6. When you’re ready, start a partner prospect list. And don’t just look at who your competitors are partnering with. Dina explains, “Starting with your competition is a sophomoric strategy. Only 5% of their partners are probably driving revenue, and those partners tend to be very loyal to their vendors.” “identify which other products your customers use and see value in, and seek out partnerships with those companies.” You can also use public data to your advantage. For example, you could determine the number of prospects in certain SIC codes and geographic areas and compare them to the partners you have in that area. If the ratio is low enough, you may want to recruit more partners in that area. Use a tool like batchGEO.com to mash up companies and their SIC codes with your partner coverage.

   In Integration partner selection

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