Following the summer period, with channel leaders and your sales team refreshed from the seasonal slowdown, it’s time to reset, plan and prepare – and preparation is more critical than ever. The UK economic downturn looks set to continue into the latter half of the year, which means channel pros will need a tenacious strategy to be set up for success heading into EOY and 2025.
With Q4 quickly approaching, your top channel priority is shoring up your pipeline and pinpointing areas for improvement. With that in mind, what are the key considerations channel teams should keep in mind as you plan for both continuous improvements and growth in H2 2024?
Consideration 1: Collaboration and continuous communication
First and foremost, you must assess how you are tracking against your 2024 partner plan: finding out where you are missing the mark, understanding what strategies garnered the most success throughout the year, and identifying opportunities that you have not yet explored.
For this assessment to be effective, you must foster close collaboration and trust with your channel partners so that they feel comfortable providing feedback on their struggles and evolving needs. This means constant engagement, consistent listening, and frequent education between your business and partners.
Regular health checks throughout the year are a best practice and can make the Q4 crunch more manageable, but the Q4 months are non-negotiable times to have these conversations.
How the information sourced from these conversations is stored and used will define if you can elevate yourself to a trusted advisor for your channel ecosystem.
With so many tech vendors to compete with, the onus is on you to ensure partners are empowered and educated to understand their customers’ problems thoroughly and know if your solution is the best fit.
Your sales team must be able to quickly find partner details to have informed, productive conversations on the partner’s challenges, tailoring the conversation about updates to your platform that suit their needs and customer base. One example of this is creating personalised demos for prospects and current partners.
Teams may also prioritise smaller investments in partner collaboration, such as providing pre-sales and commercial webinars. While these may seem insignificant to your business, they can have a big impact in terms of strengthening partner relations for the long term.
The ultimate goal of any channel programme is for it to grow alongside your business. This will not happen if your partner feels like it is on an island, and it will undoubtedly impact your bottom line if communication is not prioritised – in fact, channel partners influenced 70 per cent of IT buying decisions last year, according to a Canalys study. In short, you cannot afford to not prioritise close relationships with their channel partners.
Consideration 2: Tapping into new growth opportunities
Once you feel comfortable with the state of your existing partner relationships, you can effectively identify new opportunities for growth, perhaps through acquiring new partners or breaking into new verticals.
It may also mean expanding on an existing partnership in ways you didn’t think possible. Leveraging this opportunity often means working with partners to identify pain points or growth areas they don’t even know exist.
It may be that the partner doesn’t know what they don’t know, so growth opportunities haven’t come to light yet. Ask the partner what keeps them up at night – this will help you find potential new verticals or offerings to support them and their end users.
The best way to know if you’re on the right track in capitalising on growth opportunities is when partners are providing open feedback and proactively bringing you potential opportunities.
Once they are well informed and equipped to ask the right questions of their end users, knowing exactly what you can offer and don’t currently offer, you can better understand how to adapt your product and strategy to make the most new opportunities.
Why Q4 is so important
The adage “if you’re not five minutes early, you’re late” rings especially true when looked at in the context of the channel. Executing on 2025 goals cannot start on January 1 – by then, it’s too late.
Q4 is a critical time when channel partners are connecting with end users who are assessing their tech stacks for the year ahead. Being at the forefront of those conversations and an active participant with your channel partners now is critical to make sure you’re making the most of this time.
Through collaboration and consistent communication, you can make your channel partners feel that you’re their trusted advisor and know exactly what they need to succeed.
Keeping open lines of communication not only right sizes your existing partner programme, it also lays the foundation for future growth, be it through new verticals, new partner acquisition, or new opportunities with existing partners.
A channel programme can never be set-and-forget – it requires constant attention and understanding for maximum effectiveness. Hope is not a strategy, but effective planning, consideration of your partners GTM strategies and meaningful communication will lead to a “joined up” approach between vendors and their partners. The result? A successful new financial year.