Challenges in choosing B2B partners for your market

B2B, ideal customer, Marketing, Partners, route to market, single target market

While I have always maintained doing partnerships is the key to entering a market faster, I have observed some real challenges with respect to handling expectations. It will be wise to keep this in mind if you have the responsibility to create a partner ecosystem on the selling side.

To handle the expectations mismatch, the first thing to be sure is that the partner you are targeting is actually doing business with the customers (your Ideal Customer profile) you want to target. A lot of issues arise because with the secondary research that your team does, the partners seem to be in the same market that you want to target, but after you start engaging with them, there is a disconnect. So you need to be clear before you sign up a partner, that they actually have customers in your target market.

The other issue is with respect to the sales bandwidth – if your agenda for partnering is to get access to a large market, then you need to have enough bandwidth allocated to your product/service, by the partner. Most of the times the partners over commit in terms of what they will be able to do. This happens because either

They have fewer sales people than they told you.
The sales people already have too many products/services to sell so your product/service is an overload on them
Your product/service is technically more complex and the sales people don’t have the ability to take this to the market

One other item which I encounter often is the expectation mismatch on both sides. In my opinion this happens because from your side, the channel’s person is in a hurry to show partner acquisition without clearly understanding the partner’s strengths and weaknesses. This happens all the time because all of us have to meet our monthly/quarterly numbers.

On the other side, the partner thinks that since they are partnering with your company, you will help them sell. While to a certain extent, you will enable the partner to sell and you will have marketing programs to help the partners, at the end of the day, the partner has to sell. If you have to sell for the partner, then why do you need a partner.

I have noticed these as the key challenges. If you ensure that communication are clear, the qualification criteria for a partner that you want and the type of people that they employ is clear then a lot of heartburn and wasted time can be avoided.

As we progress I will share other challenges that you should be aware off.

Inspite of that, I would still think that the partner route is the fastest way to get into a new market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

What do you want to achieve – from the partnership

B2B, ideal customer, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, Partners, single target market, Symbiotic relationship

I wrote 3 posts on riding the elephant – and how the relationship with an elephant can help you get through any forest (market).

What was not clear from those 3 posts was one fact – which elephant should you choose…..this is as critical as identifying the single target market that I keep talking about.

The elephant that you choose to partner with, should be focussed on the market in which you want to operate. If the elephant has a different area of interest compared to you then taking this elephant is going to take you into the wrong forest.

To be able to choose the right elephant therefore you need to ask the fundamental question – what is it that we want to achieve with this partnership. Once this question is clearly answered then it become easier to identify you partners that you want to work with.

This question gets answered even better when you have identified the single target market that you want to address, because then you will know if the partners that you are looking for has product or services for those customers that you want to work with.

If you want to target B2B customers in the enterprise space as an example then your partner needs to be someone who already has customers in the enterprise space, and who does not have a product or service which directly competes with yours. If the partner already has something that is similar to yours then they will never move your product.

Keeping the above example in mind, you then need to figure out how you will work with the various sales people of your partner and why should they take you to the customer.

While partnering is a very valid concept, there are a lot of human issues which need to be addressed. The bigger the target partner you are trying to work with , the more sales, pre-sales and marketing people involved, the larger is the challenge of engaging them and larger is the stamina you should have to wait for success.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Riding the elephant – using the power of relationships part 3

Marketing, Partners, relationships, route to market, Symbiotic relationship

The best use of this symbiotic relationship is when the customer does not know your company. Due to the relationship that the OEM has either directly or because of the brand association, you get a free ride into the customer.

I remember there was a Japanese consumer electronics giant in India. When I tried talking to them, they were very clear that they did not deal with Indian companies. They would only deal with the OEM with whom they had the global relationship.

When this global OEM however introduced us into the account as the only specialists in that product, they ended up having to do business with us.

Now comes the real story. Once they started doing business, they realised the benefits we offered. So instead of doing business direct with the OEM which was their preferred method earlier, they started routing all the business through us.For almost 5 years till we were in that line of business the customer every year was giving us more than Rs 50 million of business on various products and services.

For the OEM also it was a better deal, because we were taking over all the challenges related to delivery and support across the country, they also preferred that the customer, route the business through us.

In another instance a customer had bought one OEM’s product, but the partner who had sold it, messed up on the implementation of the product. Being a very prestigious customer, the OEM had to get us in to clean up. The result was an amazing long lasting relationship with the end customer.

Since these OEMs are looking at growing very fast to create a dominant position, they put in a lot of sales bandwidth to penetrate the market. As a small company you will never be able to garner this bandwidth. But because of your relationship, wherever the elephant goes, you will automatically reach there.

Consider this as a very critical market penetration strategy to gather a large portion of the market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Riding the elephant – using the power of relationships

Leverage, Marketing, Partners, Symbiotic relationship

I have always had the belief that when you are a small company, in the tech services market space, you don’t have the wherewithal to define the market, or challenge the incumbent with revolutionary new technology, then you need to use guerrilla tactics to get in front of the customers and get business.

When your company is small most big companies don’t want to deal with you, not because they have anything against you, but they just want to work with guys who are bigger and more stable. Big companies also have more inertia and no one wants to spend time trying to evaluate small companies.

One practice which I used very successfully over the years was to align with huge global behemoths in some specific niche product offering which they were either launching or were bringing new into the country. All these product companies have huge marketing budgets so they know how to get in front of the customer. That is your weakness. You are a small services company who can’t get in front of enough people.

So as an analogy, if you want to travel through the jungle on foot, you won’t last very long alive. But if you are sitting on an elephant, then where ever in the jungle the elephant goes, you can travel safely and enjoy the view. You however need to build a good relationship with the elephant to be able to ride on its back. in nature they call these as symbiotic relationships.

As I mentioned these global product companies have huge inertia, systems etc. which are a weakness for the sales person and marketing person at the local level to move the global organisation.

These are places where you can leverage on your being small. being a small company you can take decisions quickly, you can turn around solutions fast.

So you can offer these local sales people support interns of feet on the ground for technical support or do PoCs for them etc. There will be some people who you may find are selfish and take you for a ride. But in most cases the law of reciprocity – from Robert Cialdini’s Influence – comes in. Those sales people whom you help in winning the sale help take you in front of more customers. Obviously there are general ethics that you have to follow because partnerships take a long time to build.

Since these are global companies, you can also get references of other sales people and create your own network which can help you grow further. If the global company is growing with the product then you will have a long runway for your own growth using this methodology.

There is a downside to this method though. If the company decides to exit that line of business, then all the investments that you have made in terms of your technical manpower etc. go waste. So you need to find a way to utilise those assets while you are looking for then next global elephant on whose back you can ride into the next market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!