Your success as a channel partner

A good XaaS (Every­thing as a Ser­vice) offer­ing with a gen­uine unique sell­ing propo­si­tion (USP) among the tar­get groups is an ini­tial basic require­ment for a suc­cess­ful mar­ket launch. How­ev­er, many ven­dors will already have expe­ri­enced that this is not suf­fi­cient for the suc­cess of the busi­ness mod­el. The dynam­i­cal­ly grow­ing num­ber of providers and the increas­ing com­plex­i­ty in the dig­i­tal world pose an ever greater go-to-mar­ket chal­lenge for ven­dors. They need a goal-ori­ent­ed ven­dor chan­nel marketing.

It is also becom­ing increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to keep exist­ing cus­tomers loy­al due to imi­ta­tors and inno­va­tors with sim­i­lar ideas, even for offer­ings or busi­ness mod­els with a gen­uine Unique Sell­ing Propo­si­tion. The will­ing­ness of cus­tomers to quick­ly switch to anoth­er provider is declin­ing not only in the b2c sec­tor, but also in the b2b sector.

Vendor channel marketing – what are the characteristics of a good vendor/channel partner partnership?

Ven­dors have rec­og­nized the oppor­tu­ni­ties in the XaaS mar­ket for enter­pris­es. They are look­ing to mar­ket flex­i­ble and sub­scrip­tion-based solu­tions tai­lored to spe­cif­ic needs. How­ev­er, there are a num­ber of things to con­sid­er when look­ing for the right chan­nel part­ners. For one, part­ners should have strate­gi­cal­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly aligned them­selves with the “every­thing as a ser­vice” mar­ket. For exam­ple, they should oper­ate mar­ket­places that are fre­quent­ed by the tar­get groups and enjoy a high rep­u­ta­tion among them in terms of the qual­i­ty of the offer­ings. A provider that already enjoys a good rep­u­ta­tion as a brand is cer­tain­ly more help­ful than a “no name.” How­ev­er, it is impor­tant that mar­ket­ing is based on a mutu­al com­mit­ment between ven­dor and part­ner. A joint sales and mar­ket­ing plan should be devel­oped to under­pin the seri­ous­ness of the col­lab­o­ra­tion. In return, the ven­dor pro­vides the chan­nel part­ner with gen­er­ous mar­gins (over 50%) and high-qual­i­ty presales/sales train­ing (train­ings, class­es, acad­e­mies, etc.). In addi­tion, the ven­dor offers the part­ner coop­er­a­tion in feed­back-based fur­ther devel­op­ment of the solu­tion. This can even lead to the estab­lish­ment of a joint com­pa­ny between ven­dor and part­ner, which crowns a coop­er­a­tion.