Partner Enablement: Tips, Metrics, Partnership Types, and Practical Examples

Introduction

There are three main reasons why we decided to tackle partner enablement here on The Enablement Insight.

First and foremost, partner sales have been on the rise for quite some time now, gathering more and more momentum in the current selling environment.

With tight budgets, an increasing number of stakeholders involved in deals, prolonged sales cycles, and challenges in maintaining healthy pipelines, partnering with other vendors has become a strategic necessity. 

Today’s buyers are more informed and autonomous, sourcing most of their information independently before engaging with a seller.

This shift necessitates that companies leverage partnerships to reach and meet potential buyers where they are through various touchpoints, such as social platforms and industry events, and use data coming from trusted partners to uncover buyer signals for timely engagement.

Secondly, partner enablement could be seen as an extension of sales enablement, a cousin that likes to go outside the house (its company) and enable the different types of partners to sell its products better. 

Last but definitely not least, I got the chance to speak with Will Taylor, an expert in the partnerships space who has worked at companies such as Vidyard, Mailshake, Reveal, and Nearbound, just to name a few.

He was kind enough to give me an extremely insightful peek “behind the curtain” of partner enablement.

What is partner enablement?

When he elaborated on his initial brief definition, Will described partner enablement as aligning your company’s goals with those of your partners, ensuring both parties understand how to collaborate towards a shared objective. 

Once this initial alignment is achieved, the success of the collaboration hinges on how well you equip external partners with the necessary tools, resources, training, and support to effectively sell or distribute your company’s products or services. 

The essence of having sales partners is to create mutual benefits, where both companies derive unique value from the partnership, leading to increased revenue for everyone involved.

The goal and value alignment

At a glance, this seems like a no-brainer. The goal is to get as much new business as possible. That way, everyone makes more money.

Makes sense, right?

In reality, things are more complicated than that, and the misalignment between your company and your partners’ goals is most commonly the main reason for an underwhelming partnership. 

Namely, while increased revenue is (almost) always the ultimate goal for every company, there is a wide variety of specific business objectives that may drive companies toward developing commercial partnerships with other companies.

For some potential partners, the goal may be commissions; for others, it might be service hours. Other partners may have a product that would work particularly well in combination with your product, and they might want to enter a partnership to take advantage of this synergy. 

Alignment on shared goals should never be at the expense of what your company is looking to gain from the partnership.

Are you looking to enter a new market and you want a partner with an established presence in that space?

Are you looking for more reach within a certain segment or even a specific list of potential customers?

This is just scratching the surface of all the possible business goals that two companies considering a partnership may be pursuing.

It is not that difficult to see how a misalignment of goals can result in a partnership that is a waste of everyone’s time.

For example, if your primary goal is to tap into a niche market segment with a partner who has deep expertise and connections within that segment, but your potential partner is focused on broad market appeal and mass distribution, there will be a significant misalignment.

The partner may prioritise marketing efforts that favour their broader market strategy, neglecting the niche segment you aim to penetrate, which will result in unmet expectations and an ineffective partnership.

Another interesting point that Will mentioned is the importance of personal alignment and vested interest – in other words, it’s not just about broader business goals. The individual managing the partnership within the partner company must share your priorities.

Will frames this as one of the key questions you should be asking yourself for initiating a partnership before anything is signed:

“What does this person care about?” 

They are your lifeline into the other company, and if the person doesn’t share your priorities or you cannot align with what that individual cares about, the partnership’s potential is limited, at best. This personal connection and vested interest can drive the partnership’s success as much as business alignment.

One other factor that came up as being absolutely crucial in partner enablement is the type of partner you are building a partnership with.

That is why, in the following section, we will go over the most common types of partnerships and how partner enablement can help support and advance them.

Different types of partnerships and how to enable them

While Will mentioned that there are more than a dozen different kinds of partnerships that your company can engage in, our conversation focused on a selection of these, depending on the amount of partner enablement that is required and how effective partner enablement can be.

Will conveniently categorised them in three tiers according to how enablement-heavy they are.

Let’s now examine each of them and discuss what level of partner enablement they would entail.

Managed service providers (MSPs) partnerships

As the name suggests, managed service providers (MSPs) offer managed services, and your company can form a partnership with them to include your products in their offerings.

This partnership benefits both parties: MSPs enhance their service offerings with your product, and your company gains exposure and access to end clients who might otherwise be difficult or resource-intensive to reach.

For example, consider a company that has developed a state-of-the-art micro-perimeter, guard-railed cybersecurity platform.

An ideal partner would be an MSP that provides IT services.

The MSP can add your cybersecurity software to their managed services packages, offering clients enhanced security while providing your company with an inroad into their customer base (throughout this article, we will continue using this hypothetical cybersecurity product company for examples, by the way).

Managed service providers typically require the most partner enablement among all partner types for several reasons. 

Primarily, they need comprehensive knowledge of your product – what it does, how it adds value to their customers, how it integrates with common tech stacks, and more. This would also include the provision of relevant sales and marketing collateral. 

Additionally, MSPs need to be not only seller-certified but also implementation-certified. This means you must train them to sell and implement your product correctly, ensuring it delivers maximum value to the end customer as quickly as possible.

Unlike other partner types, MSPs are involved throughout the entire customer lifecycle, not just the initial phases, which calls for a comprehensive partner enablement strategy.

Channel partnerships

In this type of partnership, our hypothetical company with a revolutionary cybersecurity product collaborates with third-party companies to sell its products through their established channels.

This strategy leverages the partner’s market presence and distribution networks to expand the product’s reach and increase sales. For the partner, they gain an additional piece of software to offer their customers and receive a percentage of every sale they make.

Channel partners such as resellers are also in the first group of the most enablement-heavy partners because they spend a lot of time hands-on with your product, engaging with both existing and potential customers.

Consequently, you will want them to complete a certification programme to become your sellers and provide them with extensive product-related content and training. This training should ensure they can demonstrate the value of your product at different stages of the buyer’s journey and ultimately close sales.

Good channel partner enablement may also include giving them access to your learning management system, thus providing ongoing support to their training on your products, especially if you introduce new products or functionalities often.

Essentially, the channel partner enablement process is most similar to internal sales enablement, with the key difference being that you must tailor this enablement to a completely different company with its own culture, processes, goals, and internal dynamics. As you can imagine, this is not the easiest thing to do.

This is something we will cover in more detail when we discuss the similarities and differences between sales and partner enablement later in the article.

Ecosystem partnerships

Will and I also touched upon ecosystem partnerships, which involve creating a network of interconnected services and products that enhance the overall value proposition for all participants. 

This model leverages the collective strengths and data of multiple companies to drive mutual growth and customer success.

Platforms like Crossbeam and Reveal facilitate these partnerships by enabling secure data sharing and account mapping between partners.

This allows companies to identify mutual customers, share insights, and collaboratively approach sales opportunities, effectively shortening sales cycles, providing combined value, and increasing win rates.

For instance, if your company partners with another that sells to the same ideal customer profile (ICP), you can share CRM data through these platforms. This collaboration helps receive real-time alerts when a prospect buys from a partner, enabling timely and relevant sales engagements.

The combined value proposition of integrated solutions often leads to higher customer satisfaction and retention rates, as the ecosystem provides a comprehensive solution that single products cannot.

In essence, ecosystem partnerships are about leveraging the network effect where the value of the network grows with each additional participant.

This strategy is particularly effective in the modern B2B landscape, where decision-makers seek integrated, high-value solutions rather than isolated products.

By focusing on building a robust ecosystem, companies can ensure they are part of a broader value chain, thereby increasing their market presence and customer reach.

In terms of the role of partner enablement within ecosystem partnerships, they will need to concentrate on coordinating go-to-market strategies, facilitating data sharing, and ensuring seamless communication between partners.

This involves setting up regular meetings to align on joint objectives, creating shared dashboards for tracking mutual customers, and developing co-branded marketing materials highlighting the combined value proposition. 

Additionally, they might be responsible for managing the technology platforms (e.g., a partner portal) that facilitate these partnerships and ensuring that all participants use the shared data effectively to drive sales and customer success.

Technology partnerships

Technology partnerships entail integrating your own product with other tech companies to enhance offerings for both parties.

For illustration, let’s once again take our cybersecurity software company. It could, for instance, partner with a company that provides a factory-floor data management service. 

This integration would add a layer of data protection for the partner’s customers and allow your cybersecurity product to gain access to (traditionally) conservative companies and departments typically wary of new technologies.

As your cybersecurity product proves its value in manufacturing, other departments might take an interest, potentially leading to broader adoption across the entire organisation.

When we talked about the different types of partnerships, Will included technology partnerships in the second most enablement-heavy group.

This is primarily because there is less direct sales involvement compared to channel partnerships, and technology partners do not usually act as implementers. 

Essentially, technology partners are mostly involved in the early stages of the customer lifecycle, focusing on combining complementary products that enhance each other’s value. 

Will did point out, however, that some technology partners might play a more active role in onboarding their customers to your product or providing some technical support, necessitating some level of training.

Referral and affiliate partnerships

Referral and affiliate partnerships are the least enablement-intensive of all the partnerships we discussed in detail.

In referral partnerships, you work with other businesses to refer customers to each other, leveraging mutual benefits. This partnership helps both companies expand their customer base and increase sales through trusted recommendations.

In affiliate partnerships, you engage individuals or businesses to promote your products in exchange for a commission. This type of partnership leverages the affiliate’s network and influence to expand your product’s reach and drive sales.

Since these partners effectively only recommend potential customers to get in touch with you, their involvement with your product is very limited, calling for minimal enablement.

In both these cases, partner enablement mostly revolves around providing co-marketing collateral and, in some cases, a workshop or two about what your product does well, where it fits into the broader landscape, and how they can best communicate this value.

How to stand out as a partner vendor and optimise your partnerships

In the majority of partnerships, as a vendor, you won’t be the only one. Often, your partner will have several products and companies from your exact niche, offering similar solutions to yours. 

Naturally, this will significantly affect their level of involvement in your partnership and their likelihood of prioritising you over other vendors, effectively your “competition”.

In addition to ensuring alignment on business and personal goals, as a partner enablement function, there are several strategies you can employ to encourage partners to view you as the “preferred vendor”.

These aim to make your product the first one that comes to mind when they consider recommendations.

Finding the shortest route to shared value

In terms of partner enablement, the concept of value is more complex than in sales enablement. In sales enablement, you are supporting the sales or GTM organisation to demonstrate the value of your product to prospects and customers as efficiently and as effectively as possible. 

In partner enablement, we are talking about shared value – something that will bring value to both parties in the partnership.

If you are able to show the shortest route to shared value, you are significantly improving your chances of becoming the preferred vendor and enjoying a successful partnership. 

This requires a two-pronged approach. For one, your partners need to rest assured that they are attaching their name to something truly valuable to their customers and better than what the other vendors have to offer. 

This may include sharing assets such as case studies where your product has provided exquisite value to end customers who are similar to their customers. This can involve technology demos where you “show off” your product to your (potential) partners. You can also share some relevant and compelling data with them: your NPS, your churn rate, expansion revenue – anything that shows customers love you.

In essence, you are sharing as many success stories and as much data that supports your case as you can to make sure they feel comfortable that your product will be right for their customers, target market, or audience.

The second approach entails giving before you take.

For example, if you are working with a managed service provider and you know that a couple of your existing customers are struggling with something this MSP might help them with, you go to the MSP and tell them, “Look, these five accounts could really use your help. We can make the introduction, and so on…”

All of a sudden, you are not just another vendor that might fit one of their customers; you are someone who is immediately providing value to them proactively. 

You can expand on this by creating a list of accounts that both of you may be targeting or already working on (account mapping is essential here). Then, workshop ideas on how to jointly approach those accounts, bolstering your value proposition by going in together.

Another example that Will shared about unearthing and then pushing joint value is in technology partnerships, when you consider integrating your solution with a partner’s.

In such cases, Will recommends finding shared customers and reaching out to them to learn how they are using your two products in conjunction. 

This becomes a product-oriented exploration where you already have your beta testers and use cases to start from. 

By bringing actual stories to the rest of the market, you can demonstrate the value of the integrated solution.

Being proactive

In our conversation, Will shared that the most common reason why partnerships underperform is that, once the partnership is established, the enthusiasm often wanes and the only result is a bombastic announcement followed by a whole lot of nothing. 

As Will put it, “…let’s make noise about it; we have this idea in our minds that we think is good and then there’s no action because we don’t know where to bring it.”

To counteract this, partner enablement functions or any other functions engaging in partner enablement activities need to act proactively. 

For example, in situations where a partner is selling a multitude of technologies, one way to show them the value of selling your particular product is to examine the list of technologies they are selling and identify those with which your product has integrated well in the past.

Let’s assume they are selling 15 other technologies, and you know that your existing customers have found value in using your product alongside 5 of those 15; you have a starting point.

Talk to your customers, ask them how they have been using your product in conjunction with one of those, discover how that particular combination has provided value for them, and build use cases and customer success stories.

Next, share those insights with your new partner and demonstrate how well your product fits with those five technologies.

Show them the shared value and provide them with all the support they may require to sell such product packages that include your product. Make it easy for them to associate your product with revenue growth. 

The value for them will be the commission they receive from adding your solution to the mix, and they will be more inclined to include your product when selling those five technologies you integrate so well with.

Tailoring content to each partner

Another area where partner enablement is particularly active is in providing the partners with marketing and sales content that they can use to more effectively sell your product.

As is often the case with sales assets, the one-size-fits-all approach will not cut it. 

In partner enablement, several additional factors must be considered when customising co-marketing and sales materials, such as:

• Joint value: Always keep the partner in mind.

• Type of partnership: Determine how much of the sales process they will handle and the level of technical detail required.

• Partner’s current technology offerings: Understand how your product fits within their portfolio.

• Business and personal goals: Consider the objectives of both the partner and your point of contact.

These factors will guide the customisation of co-marketing and sales content for individual partners.

The ultimate goal is to create superior content that encourages partners to favour your product over those of competitors in the same space

Partner enablement metrics to track

As everyone in the sales enablement field is aware, metrics, or more precisely, the right metrics, are the key to doing effective enablement and demonstrating its value to senior leadership.

This is why I made sure to learn from Will whether partner enablement tracks different metrics than sales enablement. 

Unsurprisingly, they do, and it makes a lot of sense.

Onboarding and certification time

Onboarding is a well-known metric in sales enablement and is equally crucial in partner enablement.

Essentially, you want your new partners to be capable of selling your product as swiftly as possible. The extent of this process will largely depend on the type of partnership.

For referral or affiliate partnerships, onboarding typically involves performing due diligence on the individuals or companies you plan to work with.

However, for MSPs and channel partners, the onboarding process can be more time-consuming.

This complexity is heightened by the need to certify partners who will manage more than just the top of the funnel, unlike referral and affiliate partners.

Channel partners need to be seller-certified, which, depending on the complexity of your product, can take a significant amount of time.

Managed service providers, especially those involved in sales, will require the most certification as they need to be both seller- and implementor-certified.

The goal is to make partner enablement as effective as possible, enabling new partners to start selling and implementing your product quickly and efficiently.

This typically involves training them on product knowledge, value propositions, handling common objections, sharing success stories, and understanding the associated business impact.

Time to first win

As mentioned several times, the success of a partnership largely hinges on the joint value it creates. This is why “time to first win” is a critical metric in partner enablement. 

If it takes your partner more than 30-45 days to initiate the first conversation about your product, it could indicate a problem. They might not be sufficiently motivated to sell your product, or their existing ecosystem may not be well-suited for it.

Monitoring this metric is essential, and you should investigate thoroughly if results take too long to materialise.

Sometimes, as a partner enablement professional, you can address the issue, but other times, it might simply mean the partnership was not the right fit, allowing you to focus on more promising partnerships.

Ongoing partner performance and revenue generated through partners

While the time to first sale is an essential partner enablement metric, it is just as important to track ongoing partner performance. 

For example, a new partner might be able to win you a couple of deals very early on, only to stop sending any business your way within weeks.

Perhaps they have a few customers who trust them unconditionally, but they struggle to sign new customers. Perhaps they were just trying to plug a few holes, and your product seemed perfect for that purpose. 

This is why you should always monitor the ongoing performance of your partners.

A great metric for doing exactly this is revenue generated through partners, where you monitor the revenue that can be attributed to them. 

The important thing is to keep a close eye on any emerging negative trends and notice particularly significant deviations from the initial success. 

The good news is that, with an effective partner enablement strategy, you can be proactive and try to curb any negative trends that you notice. This can involve anything from providing additional sales training to your partner to creating and sharing new sales assets. 

Partner renewal and engagement rates

In many situations, partnerships are renewed automatically once the initial agreed-upon duration of the agreement has passed.

While this may provide some continuity and prevent excessive documentation and legal work, it also poses a certain risk. 

Namely, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer number of partners who are bringing in sub-optimal new business – whether this entails a low number of new customers or customers who keep churning unnaturally frequently. 

As a partner enablement professional, you don’t have the luxury of spending a lot of time with such partners.

By having a regular renewal cadence, you task yourself with reviewing all of the partnerships you have going on and identifying partnerships that are a lost cause. 

Additionally, this will encourage you to ask for partner feedback and gauge how satisfied your partners are with you and your product, and whether there is something they’ve learned from end customers that you can action and improve on. 

Closely associated with partner retention is another metric that you should keep track of, and that is the Partner Satisfaction Index (PSI for short). It is a great way to monitor the sentiment of your partners towards you and your product.

In order to track this metric, you will measure things like satisfaction with the support you provide to your partner, communication effectiveness, goal alignment, and overall satisfaction.

Sales enablement vs partner enablement – similarities and differences

By now, you have probably noticed a few ways in which sales enablement and partner enablement are both similar and quite different at the same time. In this section, we will explore these similarities and differences in more detail. 

Similarities

As mentioned earlier, partner enablement encompasses many activities that sales enablement performs in-house, but is directed towards the various partners your company has established relationships with over time.

For instance, several sales enablement pillars, such as sales training and sales content, will be integral to partner enablement efforts.

These elements will likely need to be adapted to account for the different types of partnerships, company cultures, business goals, sales approaches, and varying levels of product involvement.

Nevertheless, you will probably be able to repurpose much of the existing training and content developed for internal use – as one of our contributing enablement leaders, Nate Vogel, shared in our sales enablement best practices article,

“Scale with 80%+ Sales Enablement content leveraged for Partners so you can have global parity of enablement initiatives.”

Differences

As it turns out, partner enablement differs from sales enablement more than I initially expected before my talk with Will. 

Some of these differences were anticipated, such as the fact that partner enablement professionals cannot influence the sales processes and sales technology used by their partners. 

Additionally, there is a significant difference in the interpersonal relationships that you can build as a sales enablement professional vs a partner enablement professional. 

In sales enablement, you are building close, ongoing relationships with sales reps, sales managers, and other stakeholders. This may include one-on-one coaching, performance feedback, and ad-hoc advising.

In partner enablement, the relationships are typically at the organisational level rather than the individual one. The focus is on building and maintaining strong partnerships, aligning business goals, and providing high-level support rather than individual coaching.

Moreover, I had not given much thought to some of the unique challenges that partner enablement specialists face. For instance, the shared value and goals aspect of partner relationships significantly complicates things.

Another big difference can be observed in the action and motivation aspects. 

In sales enablement, we primarily focus on internal motivation and proactively leading continuous improvement of sales reps and their managers.

In partner enablement, the focus is on motivating partners to take action and engage in joint initiatives. This includes taking a proactive role in co-marketing efforts, providing incentives, and aligning on mutual goals.

We have already covered the key partner enablement metrics above, and you have probably noticed a big difference between those and the most commonly tracked sales enablement metrics such as internal sales performance indicators like time to ramp, quota attainment, win rates, sales cycle length, as well as additional content or coaching-based metrics.

Conclusion

For me, and I am sure many readers, partner enablement felt like simply taking sales enablement and applying it to one’s sales partners.

As I started researching the topic in more detail, and especially after talking to Will, I came to realise that it is a completely separate discipline. 

Sure, there are significant similarities between the two disciplines, most notably in terms of training and content.

However, the fact that you are enabling people from entirely different companies demands a more organisational approach, with the main points of focus being discovering shared goals, delivering shared value, and enabling and motivating partners to act on those goals and value. 

As more and more companies start engaging in mutually beneficial partnerships and as partner ecosystems become more and more complex, I am certain that partner enablement will only gain importance.

Additionally, I see it as a great opportunity for sales enablement professionals who wish to expand their scope in their careers. 

A huge thanks to Will Taylor, who took the time out of his busy schedule to have a good conversation with me and share truly invaluable insights that made this article possible!

For more expert-guided introductions to enablement topics, check out my intro on customer success enablement with Elizabeth Italiano, and the one on product enablement with Devon McDermott.