PARTNERSHIPS
The importance of building trust with your channel partners
Barry D’Arcy, VP of partners at headless content management system provider Storyblok, explores why listening and trust is vital for channel success from a CMS perspective.
We are at a time when partnerships are evolving faster than ever and are coming to the forefront of all interactions in business. In the past, partnerships were more linear in nature and the value of having them took time to be realised. The number of vendors on the market was very limited and these vendors, or technology-driven companies, had a hard time understanding the value of partners. Their limitations did not allow for mutual innovation and the value of having partnerships was being overlooked. But this is not the case anymore. Today, in the most successful companies, you will find a group of innovators who are convinced that the future of technology and business shines bright for those who invest in a partner program and partner ecosystems. Partnering with a company that specialises in solving a problem that complements your own product can be one of the most efficient ways to fill gaps and introduce improvements for clients. A recent study by EY, entitled ‘ The CEO Imperative: How mastering ecosystems transforms performance ’, showed that businesses that are a part of at least one ecosystem have witnessed some significant improvements where ecosystems make up, on average, 13.7% of their total annual revenues, drive 12.9% in cost reduction, and generate 13.3% in incremental earnings. However, you can’t just sell a product to the channel and reseller ecosystem and expect the revenues to come. Building and developing your partnerships must come first. Partnerships are like a lever When done right, partnerships can enable you to do more with less, and this can be very helpful during an economic downturn. From our experience at Storyblok, partnerships are like a lever: the more partnerships we grow, the more heavy lifting we can do. They
allow us to focus on what we do best and rely on our partners for the rest. And this can apply to any business because the main rule of a successful business is that you cannot be everything to everyone. Therefore, we must focus on our core business and use partnerships to leverage what’s missing. Being in a partnership can help partners get in touch with the right leads by leveraging each other’s networks. Each partner has a close relationship with their clients, which means their clients will trust them when making a recommendation. Trust doesn’t just happen overnight though: the key is listening and understanding what clients need. If a prospect didn’t have a problem they were trying to solve, they wouldn’t be in the market for a new product. It sounds obvious, but to help the customer understand why your product is the solution to their problem, you must understand and be able to clearly articulate why your product is the solution to their problem. This is a critical principle in how Storyblok delivers sales enablement to its agency partners. Feedback loops – listen, learn and improve your product An added bonus is that being part of a partnership or an ecosystem becomes an invaluable source of feedback on your product. If you are part of a technology partner programme that is focused solely on selling, you are unlikely to get that kind of feedback. Again, this is where listening and relationships come to help and add so much more value. Partners are in it together Lots of data in the market points out an estimated 40-50% increase in customer win rate for deals with partners involved. We have also seen that partnerships tend to lead to bigger deals due to trust and collaboration. When partners approach potential clients
Barry D’Arcy VP of partners
storyblok.com
“
Each partner
has a close relationship with their clients, which means their clients will trust them when making a recommendation. Trust doesn’t just happen overnight
though: the key is listening and understanding what clients need.
”
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