What is Partner Enablement and How to Do It Well

What is partner enablement? It’s essentially the opposite of throwing someone into the deep end.

Having a rock-solid onboarding process, training program, and effective GTM materials not only makes a fantastic first impression on partners, it also helps them sell your products more effectively and, perhaps even more importantly, establishes trust — they know you’re there to support them.

But we’re guessing not every partner enablement process you’ve been through has been like that. And without knowing what great enablement looks like, it’s tough to create a top-notch program yourself.

In this post, we review what partner enablement is and share five ways the best of the best structure their partner enablement strategy — with tips from partner experts weaved throughout.

What is Partner Enablement?

Partner enablement is a set of activities that give partners the ability and desire to sell and/or implement your solution. While most people associate enablement with the beginning of a partner’s journey, it’s actually a continuous pursuit.

As Kathleen Clarke, Partner Recruitment Executive at Inseego, puts it, “With enablement, there’s no end date. You need to be thinking about how to help your partners grow their business and yours all the time.”

To keep partners informed and engaged throughout their lifecycle, enablement may include a combination of:

• Co-marketing
• Sales materials
• Marketing assets
• Business Planning
• Training & Certification
• Product updates and newsletters

And it always includes one-on-one conversations with your partners. Those discussions reveal what the partner really wants out of your partnership, and you can use that information to customize the partner’s enablement accordingly.

As partners progress through your program, meetings might shift more toward brainstorming GTM strategies, working deals together, answering questions, and soliciting feedback, but you can always gently remind them about the resources available to them.

What are the 5 Core Principles of Excellent Partner Enablement?

When it comes to enablement, the most successful channel organizations tend to do the following:

1. Dedicate Resources to Enable your Partners

Partner teams are notoriously small, so dedicating a whole resource to enablement is a big ask. While you don’t have to do that to have a great enablement program, it’s a good idea if you can swing it. Why?

Because most partner managers lack the time to develop an enablement program. They can make a valiant attempt, but (1) enablement isn’t their expertise, and (2) they’re splitting their attention between traditional partner management (and sometimes Portal management). That combination makes for a less-than-comprehensive program.

A partner enablement resource, on the other hand, can focus exclusively on optimizing the partner experience. According to Kathleen:

“The most memorable enablement programs usually have personnel dedicated to enablement. They are solely responsible for making it clear to partners what resources they have, where those resources sit, and how they can use them to accomplish their goals.”

Pro Tip

If you end up hiring enablement talent, make sure they:

• Understand your product. They need to know how to convey the product’s value prop in ways every type of partner gets excited about. 
• Like to work cross-functionally. Even if they’re a product expert, they’re going to need to work with Product and Customer Success to perfect technical trainings, Product and/or Partner Marketing to get your messaging down pat, and Sales to ensure smooth handoffs.
• Are numbers-minded. They should always be keeping track of what’s working and what’s not.

If you don’t have the budget for an enablement hire and you have a smaller program, Brian Wichinski, Director of NA Channel Sales, Partner Development, and Alliances at Cloudian, suggests relying on a partner manager with good people skills to bring partners up to speed and network with their sales teams.

“One of the best ways to get ‘in’ with a partner is to get direct access to their salesforce. It helps you cut through red tape and share your value prop with the people who can actually make an impact once they hear it.”

2. Tailor the Enablement Journey

Trying to make enablement the same for every partner is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It just isn’t going to work.

Put yourself in a services partner’s shoes for a second. What’s the most important thing you need to be successful? The answer is probably technical training.

Now, put yourself in an affiliate partner’s shoes. Do they need technical training? Probably not. Instead, they’d rather have great marketing assets ready to go. Point is, you need to design your enablement with your partners in mind.

Brian points out, “You need to be realistic about what your partners will respond to. If they’re a startup, one of your enablement steps can’t be spending thousands of dollars on a co-marketing venture. They’re just not going to be able to do that.”

He continues, “The trick is to make several enablement paths for each of your most valuable partner types that match their maturity and business model.”

To help you start outlining your enablement journeys, think about these questions in the context of each partner type:

1. What do they need to know about your program right away?
   • Examples: Commission structure, Deal Registration rules of engagement
2. What do they need to start selling our solution?
   • Examples: time with your product team, case studies, a joint selling motion
3. What do they need to bring us their next 10 deals after the first closes?
   • Examples: MDFs, a speaking slot at your annual conference, leads from you

3. Develop Content That Supports Multiple Learning Styles

Before you start barreling down the path of content creation, take a moment to think about the different ways you could convey information. Not everyone learns the same way, and, where possible, your enablement strategy should flex to reflect that. Aim for a mixture of different content, like:

• Slides
• Videos
• Quizzes
• Rich text
• Interactive demos

Make sure all of this content is easily accessible, too. Use your Partner Portal Home Page, News, and Email Marketing functionality to remind partners of the materials they have available and monitor partner progress on the backend.

4. Put in Face Time

Most enablement will likely be virtual, but it may also be worth scheduling an in-person training session once in a while. From a resourcing and budget perspective, it probably only makes sense to do this with the partners you know will be invaluable to your pipeline.

But it can be a worthwhile investment — not only will it make your content more memorable, it’ll also give you a chance to network with the partner’s team. That connection will keep you top of mind, ultimately contributing to more revenue.

“Meeting some of your partners in person shows that you’re giving them your full attention,” Brian explains.

“There might be one or two days where people are required to come into the office — plan around that schedule so you can get in some face time, answer questions, and help them understand your messaging.”

Flying to a partner site isn’t cheap, but it can be far less expensive than renting a restaurant for each evening of a conference or participating in sponsored golf tournaments. In each of those scenarios, you may only get to talk to partners for five minutes.

5. Constantly Refine Enablement

You could put together what you feel are incredible enablement plans, but there’s no way you can think of everything a partner may need — even if you talk to them upfront. Businesses change all the time, and your enablement needs to change with it.

Per Brian: “If you’re doing it right, you’re always looking for ways to enable your partners. Partners aren’t going to waste their time. Without the resources and support they need, they’ll sell someone else’s products, period.”

Here are two easy ways to do it:

Bring Up Enablement in Your Partner Meetings

An easy way to get the feedback you need? Make it a perpetual line item on your agenda for partner calls. That way, you won’t forget to ask about it, and before the next one comes up, you’ll be reminded to act on the feedback you received from the partner last time.

Before your calls, it’s a good idea to look at your partner’s behavior in your Partner Portal. Are they:

• Downloading information from the Library?
• Hitting Business Plan milestones?
• Making Co-Branded Collateral?
• Opening your email updates?
• Passing Certifications?

Bring up the content they’ve engaged with on your call. Were the trainings easy to follow? Have they used content to market to leads? If so, how? Their answers to these questions will help you understand how effective your enablement content currently is and how it could improve over time.

If they’re not engaging with your enablement materials, they’re probably not sending you deals. And it may not be intentional — maybe partners don’t know where to find this information or didn’t even know it existed.

Looking at the data beforehand allows you to ask more specific questions about what materials are working and which ones aren’t, helping the partner feel more comfortable giving you candid feedback.

Send Quarterly Surveys

You could also collect feedback on a broader scale with a quarterly survey. To boost participation, you could incentivize partners by entering them into a raffle for a prize, more MDFs, or a discount on their next resale deal.

Pro tip

Ask your customer success team for a copy of what they send to customers. Your survey won’t be the same, of course, but you can gain inspiration from the types of questions they ask and how frank they ask customers to be.

“The whole point of surveys isn’t chasing compliments,” Kathleen explains. “It’s getting constructive feedback — especially from the partners who aren’t super active. Take the time to figure out what’s holding them back. If you do, you could be sitting on a goldmine.”

Turn Enablement Into Revenue

One of the main goals of enablement is to get your partners to a point where they can understand your product well enough to formulate a compelling pitch — a pitch that ultimately leads to revenue.

And the only way to know that your enablement is working is to measure it.

Channeltivity helps you do just that, with built-in analytics for:

• Portal logins
• Newsletter opens and clicks
• Library clicks and downloads
• Co-Branded Collateral downloads
• Course completions (and quiz results)
• Organization and Individual Certifications
• MDF requests, participation, and resulting Leads

The best part? You can connect those KPIs directly to the number of closed referrals and deals your partners have brought you.

As Kathleen says, “Your Portal should be your pulse on partner behavior. Use your analytics to figure out which partners are excelling (and why) and which ones are falling behind (and why). Leveraging your Portal analytics helps you invest your time and energy in the right places.”

Want to see all that Channeltivity can do? Schedule a personalized demo to see for yourself.