Master the 7 Pillars and Incentives for Partner Success and Revenue Growth
Generally, companies specialize in one task: delivering quality products and services to customers, with speed and reduced costs. But for those that don’t operate in direct-to-customer markets and rely on other businesses as distribution channels, another stage becomes just as – or even more – important: defining, enabling, training, and motivating an entire chain of third parties that proves essential to final sales performance.
This is where a channel partner program fits in.
A partner program’s main function is to organize and track the actions and performance of channel partners. These partners aren’t directly employed by the vendor/manufacturer (think distributors, resellers, wholesalers, and licensed service providers), but they collaborate with vendors to promote, recommend, and sell one or more of their products or services. Additionally, such a program helps facilitate and maintain communications between a channel partner and a vendor, which is crucial for the success of the whole operation.
Defining Partner Program and Its First Steps
Simply put, a partner program structures collaborations with third-party resellers, dealers, distributors, and service providers to drive sales and revenue. These initiatives incentivize and reward performance, streamlining communications and aligning partners with vendor goals. With 93% of organizations reporting measurable revenue impact from partnerships, building one is essential for scaling in competitive markets.
The first step in building a partner program is to clarify objectives like revenue growth, market expansion, or lead generation. Mature programs that align goals with partner types drive 2x growth. Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) metrics early. For example, target 20% partner-sourced revenue in year one. This framework ensures mutual success and easy progress tracking.
Identify Ideal Partner Profiles
Profile partners by capabilities, markets, and alignment. Seek those with complementary audiences, strong sales pipelines, and technical expertise, and use data to tier partners: entry-level for onboarding, elite for strategic co-selling.
- Distributors: Handle logistics and broad reach.
- Resellers: Focus on direct sales.
- Service Providers: Offer implementation support.
Build the 7 Core Pillars
Fielo believes that effective programs rest on seven pillars that facilitate engagement and performance, and can be managed through a partner portal, a centralized hub for access and tracking:
- 1. Content
Partners gain access to content that has specific relevance to them. For example, product knowledge, product specifications, and price lists. It becomes a great resource for keeping track of existing products or services, as well as any updates that may come from the supplier. - 2. Business deal registration
Vendors often offer deal registration and allow partners to submit deal registration forms through the partner portal. The vendor will review the opportunity and, if approved, will prioritize support for that partner to close the deal. - 3. Marketing Development Funds (MDF)
A program helps partners earn and track MDF, which is used to pay for materials and marketing activities to help promote the supplier’s product. - 4. Configure Price Quotation (CPQ)
The Configure Price Quote (CPQ) module enables special pricing and automatic quote approval for representatives and channel management team members. - 5. Partner Locator
A feature that allows the partner to provide their unique profile and attributes so that customers can find them based on specific search criteria. - 6. Training
Most programs provide some form of eLearning that could be like a course, white papers, sales roadmaps, competitor comparisons, and presentations. Since these become a critical pillar to help partners gain a deeper understanding of the supplier’s offerings, they will help with customer interactions and sales. - 7. Incentive program management
A partner program strategically utilizes goals and rewards designed to motivate partners to promote, recommend, and sell one or more products or services from a supplier.
Some companies consider incentives to be the main pillar of a partner program because it has the ability to drive sales and other desired goals (e.g., leads, customer experience, product competency).
Design Tiered Structures and Incentives
The channel partner/provider relationship can get quite complicated, and this is why a channel partner program needs to be dynamic and adaptable. Some of the biggest manufacturing and technology companies, including Microsoft, VMWare, Caterpillar, and thousands of others, have invested their time and money in building one.
One way to make a partner program effective is by creating tiers based on performance: bronze, silver, gold, platinum. Tailor benefits like higher margins, priority support, or exclusive events.
Also, incentivize behaviors across pillars, not just sales (we’ll discuss this more ahead). Reward training completion, content downloads, deal registrations, and MDF usage to drive upstream activities. We refer to these as “revops activities” – i.e., customer-touch activities that support and drive sales; certified revops-capable partners earn 6x more revenue.
Streamline onboarding with automated workflows, personalized training, and compliance resources. Best practices include clear communication and regular check-ins.
The Secret: Get Involved with the Pillars
Here’s the secret that not many companies miss. What if you took the 7 pillars and looked at them in a different way? You should look at incentives as a way to motivate partners to get involved with the other 6 pillars.
The fundamental reason this is important is that every aspect of a supplier program is based on partner actions (deal registration, MDF spend, training) and every action is behavior-based. When you encourage the right behaviors, you get the right results.
The important aspect is to select behaviors that not only encourage the achievement of your goal, but also the behaviors that drive them – for example, if you want your partners to sell more of your product, you encourage the behaviors that lead to the sale. That means rewarding them for watching training videos, bringing in additional leads, or even sales funnel goals like giving a product demo.
High-performing partner programs transform channels into revenue engines. Implement these steps to differentiate and thrive.
