Vendors seeking growth through partners must manage relationships, match priorities: New report

Let's say you are a software vendor and you've set up a partner channel to broaden your reach into new industries and new geographic territories. You believe you have put the right elements in place - incentives, certification, technical support, even some added marketing investments. But something isn't clicking: partners - either VARs or ISVs - are missing their targets and seem to be at risk of losing focus on the opportunity you still see before you.

While the mechanics of running a partner program may be fairly straight forward, new research reveals that the success of enterprise software reseller relationships are determined by navigating a range of complexities related to differing priorities, perspectives, and skills.  Alignment on priorities for value is a key success factor, but it's not the only one, according to analyst Cindy Jutras, principal of research firm Mint Jutras, in a new report. You can view an executive summary here.

Jutras focused on in three main components of a channel strategy in her new report - recruiting new partners, improving partner execution, and sustaining successful partners. For all of these areas, relationship management ends up playing a key but subtle role.

"Based on partner feedback, it is clear that some vendors focus on making the partners successful while others focus on making money through (or even off of) the partners. On the surface this may seem like semantics but the difference can be substantial," she writes.  And those ...