Partner Identification

For more than 15 years, Service Leadership has benchmarked the financial performance of thousands of Solution Providers, creating the largest scale, longest running and most accurate benchmark of Solution Provider financial performance, operational maturity and value creation, worldwide.

The Service Leadership Index^® provides unparalleled insight into the financial performance of all partners, by their Predominant Business Model^™ (PBM), so you can see how your offers are uniquely relevant to each one. And only the Service Leadership Index shows you Operational Maturity Level^™ (OML), an exclusive, objective measure of partner business acumen, because your success depends on the business skills of your partners.

This insight enables you to have a common language with your partners and demonstrates that you understand and care about how they make money and what’s important to them. If you’ve done the work to understand your partner’s business model, then you’ll understand how your solution complements or enhances the opportunity within their target market and existing customers.

Partner Recruiting

Channel partners are an indispensable, but potentially costly link in the value chain. 80% to 90% (or more) of your channel partners likely are not producing a significant result for you today. Recruiting channel partners who have the right capabilities, resources and customers is critical to success, yet most Vendors are left recruiting as broadly as possible, leaving them with channels that are far less efficient than they could be. As a result, channel management often views building, expanding or refreshing a channel as a gargantuan exercise. The challenge is especially high when you're bringing a new, game-changing solution to market. How do you determine which partners can transform their business to keep up with you?

Because Service Leadership's team has decades of experience building and growing Solution Providers as hands-on executives when game-changing products were introduced almost monthly, we know how to spot the qualities that make an exceptional channel partner for growth or transformation. Combined with our exclusive BestProspects^™ database of more than 24,000 Solution Providers in North America, this gives you an unparalleled resource for efficient and effective channel building. Lastly, because we work closely with Solution Provider owners and executives on their own value creation strategies, we know how to demonstrate the value that a Vendor can bring in compelling terms.

Partner Program Design

When the right partner agrees to take on a new solution or service, they will only be successful if:

• The offers fit into their overall strategy – target customer profile, solutions focus, technical and consulting competencies;
• The new offering is properly incorporated into their financial model, sales approach and solutions and service offers;
• And, if their sales, engineering and executive compensation is aligned with driving the new offering.

Service Leadership’s unique business model – as consultants passionate about helping Solution Provider owners grow revenue, profit and shareholder value through best practices proven effective for their specific Predominant Business Model^™ – provides the insight required to help Vendors work with the right partners to design for success in a shorter period of time with less risk and greater return.

Service Leadership partner program design services include:

• Definition of new offers at a conceptual level, with sufficient detail to identify major reseller and end customer touch-points and price ranges;
• Development of validation points and critical success factors needed to establish the new offer(s) as a success and define the needed data elements and analysis methodology to measure and confirm success;
• Definition of channel partner profiles which have the highest likelihood of driving accelerated success with the new offers;
• And, definition of operational processes to optimize channel partner relationships, including product and services documentation, clearly defined roles, responsibilities and expectations about support, contractual documentation, compensation, marketing and messaging, service-level agreements, invoicing and reporting, and lead generation.

For the Vendor, this means higher velocity of revenue through fewer, more effective partners. For Partners, this means incorporating offers that make the most sense for their business, thereby driving higher Gross Margins and accelerated revenue growth with less risk.

Channel Monitoring & Management

Most Vendors have up to 90% of their revenue coming from as few as 10% of their partners. Even small gains in the productivity of the other 90% of partners can produce significant returns. However, the Vendor has to determine, among the underperforming 90% which, in fact, are worth investing in to produce a material result.

Service Leadership helps channel managers effectively assess partner execution ability and probability of success, more accurately invest time with partners who can, in fact, be successful and tailor conversations to offer the right partner support at the right time. Most significantly, channel managers will develop a common language with their partner’s CEO, establishing them as a strategic business partner. Service Leadership also builds and runs channel management training programs designed to integrate with existing Vendor training programs, systems, and processes, as well as being customized to reflect unique Vendor jargon, titles, roles, and markets.