Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 038 - Partner Revival: How to Reignite Inactive Partners

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038 - Partner Revival: How to Reignite Inactive Partners · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:15
  My name is Rick van den Bosch, and I'm the CEO and founder at Channext.
• 0:19
  And I'm here together with Alex Whitford.
• 0:20
  VP of Partners at Channext.
• 0:22
  Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:22
  I'm cooking.
• 0:25
  It is hot in the office.
• 0:26
  Summer is finally on its way.
• 0:27
  Yeah, it's good.
• 0:27
  Yeah.
• 0:29
  It's hardly ever this good weather in the Netherlands, but this week is going to be 30 degrees.
• 0:34
  Yeah, well, I'm from England, so yeah, it's always bad.
• 0:37
  We're in England, but yeah, no, it's good, it's good.
• 0:40
  I'm really looking forward to the weekend.
• 0:41
  It's nice to have a really hot weekend.
• 0:43
  Barbecues are out, it's a good time of the year.
• 0:45
  Nice weekend at the pool.
• 0:45
  Yeah.
• 0:48
  Luckily where we're staying has a pool, so yeah, it's a luxury in the summer.
• 0:52
  Not bad.
• 0:52
  Yeah, awful in the winter, completely pointless, but in the summer, it's amazing.
• 0:57
  I'm going to a restaurant in the forest with my girlfriend this weekend.
• 1:00
  Then we sleep in a teepee, so it's going to be very hot with 30 days.
• 1:04
  Excellent.
• 1:04
  Yeah.
• 1:05
  What you need is air conditioning and four walls, so that's an excellent timing.
• 1:09
  Good.
• 1:09
  No air conditioning there, unfortunately.
• 1:12
  Awesome.
• 1:12
  Well, let's dive into this week's topic.
• 1:16
  We've been talking a lot about onboarding.
• 1:17
  Recently, we just did the five part series about bringing your partners as quickly from net new recruited to revenue to first revenue and doing the onboarding as smooth as possible.
• 1:27
  But there's also the other side, of course, where partners might drop out, or where partners who have been doing a lot of revenue with you in the past have become more sleeping partners and don't do revenue anymore.
• 1:39
  So today we're going to talk about how do you reignite inactive partners to make sure you convert them into revenue generating partners again.
• 1:48
  Yeah, I like this spin because we've done five episodes on how do you stop partners churning, but we're all fallible, right?
• 1:53
  And partners have already churned, so how do we now recover those and bring them back into the programme?
• 1:58
  So I think there's some nice synergy there.
• 1:59
  Could you elaborate maybe a little bit on what is a sleeping partner or an inactive partner in a partner programme?
• 2:05
  Sure.
• 2:05
  So, for me, an inactive or a churn partners or sleeping partner, whatever your terminology is, is a partner that isn't doing revenue and has no intention to do revenue, right?
• 2:16
  Potentially.
• 2:16
  Or they might even be doing some little bit of revenue, but realistically it's just reactive, right.
• 2:22
  An end user randomly calls them and says, hey, I'm interested in X.
• 2:25
  And you go, okay, fine, and you facilitate that deal.
• 2:27
  But there is no proactive motion.
• 2:30
  Those are the partners that cause real problems because you have to hire more and more reps, you have to recruit more and more partners, you have to cast your net wider and wider and actually about 80% of your partner network will be sleeping or churned.
• 2:46
  And what would be a very valuable resource is rather than having to go and redefine IPP and re recruit partners, is actually to go and get that wide base of partners that are already churned and see if you can re-engage and re-activate some of them.
• 3:01
  Yeah.
• 3:01
  And you're mentioning the 80%.
• 3:03
  That's the metric we are always hearing, like, on average, in the market, in the average partner programme, 80% of partners is inactive, not generating any revenue within those inactive partner base.
• 3:15
  Do you see a difference in terms of partners that have been doing a lot of revenue in the past and then became sleeping partners and partners who never really got to a significant amount and maybe were sleeping forever, so to say.
• 3:27
  Sure.
• 3:27
  So, yes, certainly.
• 3:29
  Whenever you analyse partners, you're going to be aware of where their ceiling is, what's their potential, and if they were doing lots of revenue, unless there's been some financial reason why they're no longer doing that revenue, it means that they've got approvably.
• 3:44
  Very high ceiling.
• 3:44
  So a very typical example where they used to sell a lot of your product and now they sell a lot of your competitors.
• 3:50
  Well, to be honest, that's a prime target for you to say, right, well, if we can convince them to start selling our product over our competitors, we're going to have this big pendulum swing in revenue potential.
• 4:00
  So, yes, you want to prioritise where you can deliver the most impact and some partners are only capable of selling X, some partners are capable of selling five X and so you want to prioritise where you can make the most impact.
• 4:12
  I think that's the interesting piece of selling through the channext.
• 4:15
  Like, it's hardly ever the case that the revenue of your partner is decreasing in general, they are just positioning other products and other services, so to say, and you need to make sure that you're really on top of the shift that they are making.
• 4:27
  So you are always put in the front as when they make proposals, et cetera.
• 4:32
  Yeah, 100% most partners and most of this sort of sales game is a very transferable skill set, right?
• 4:38
  So what may happen is that a partner used to sell a lot of your product, but you're now in an industry that's diminishing and then they've pivoted to SaaS, because actually that's an industry that's massively growing.
• 4:50
  That partner is still the same, that partner still has the same skill set and they've diverted attention and that's what a lot of partners will do.
• 4:57
  They will flex depending on market conditions and vendors will as well, right.
• 5:01
  They'll stop building on premise and they'll start migrating everything to the cloud and they'll go through that transition as well.
• 5:07
  And so what's really important, and we talk a lot about this in the sales game, is sort of minimum effort, right?
• 5:13
  How can I get to target as effectively as possible?
• 5:15
  The same should be true of partners which is what are the partners that can get me to target as effectively as possible?
• 5:21
  What's really interesting is you might want to look at legacy partners, you might want to look at churn partners rather than thinking oh we have to recruit net new ones.
• 5:29
  Well those partners five years ago might have been doing amazing work with you and for whatever reason it stopped working and if you can patch that properly and really get them going again they might be the best candidate out there.
• 5:40
  Yeah, I fully agree there because there is already a relationship, of course it's very different.
• 5:45
  Like if something happened that broke trust then it's really hard to reignite the partnership.
• 5:50
  But if it's a very different reason indeed, maybe just slowly they started shifting attention or they started selling a competitor then that can still be a very interesting partner for you to reignite a relationship.
• 6:01
  They have worked with you in the past.
• 6:03
  They know also the good side of the business there and therefore if you get the right stakeholders on board again you can reignite much quicker than when you start completely net new.
• 6:13
  Maybe.
• 6:13
  Yeah.
• 6:14
  I would suggest that 99 times out of 100 the reason a partner's churned is due to misalignment than the broken trust issue.
• 6:21
  There is always that edge case and if you really did screw over a partners I would probably fish elsewhere.
• 6:27
  It's probably an easier job to go and find a different partner, but a lot of the time it's just due to inefficiencies bad communication, product direction, strategic narrative that there's lots of reasons that a partner and a vendor might not even break up but just might fall out of sync.
• 6:43
  And as their priorities became louder and more important, and in that sound like a relationship guru, this is excellent, but in that sort of vein you can bring it back together and say actually this should work.
• 6:54
  And we were working very well.
• 6:56
  How do we now drive forward and achieve great things together?
• 6:58
  And those to me in some ways are much easier than recruiting a cold partner that you've never spoken to.
• 7:05
  Yeah, I think that's a very valid point.
• 7:07
  I was just thinking now about like my dad always used to say to me when he was talking about partnerships he said Rick, the real thing to remember is that a partner is never telling you when they are leaving.
• 7:18
  I think that's also why we call it like inactive or sleeping partners and not churned.
• 7:22
  Like in customers we always say churn because a customer tells you like I'm not going to pay you anymore, our relationship is over.
• 7:29
  But in partnerships they slowly diminish and all of a sudden there's no contact anymore.
• 7:35
  Yeah, it reminds me of in Catholicism a Catholic is a lapsed Catholic.
• 7:41
  If they stop going to church I thought that was really funny because it's like they forgot.
• 7:44
  But the shame is true of partnerships.
• 7:44
  Are they're sleeping?
• 7:47
  It's like none of they actively decided to stop selling your product.
• 7:50
  So how do we now pivot that and turn that around?
• 7:52
  So they're really bought in and driving it again?
• 7:55
  Yeah, I like that analogy, actually.
• 7:57
  But when I think about it, if they don't tell you they are leaving. W hen do you determine this is now an inactive or a sleeping partner?
• 8:07
  Are there certain indicators or is there a certain rule of thump where indeed you can look at like, hey, now we need to take action?
• 8:14
  Yeah, most big channels will decide if you haven't sold anything for three quarters, you're inactive.
• 8:18
  That's pretty much the industry standard definition.
• 8:21
  I would say it's a bad one, but it is the industry standard.
• 8:24
  For me, you want some tooling and some data and some automation that allows you to measure not just revenue performance, but leading indicators.
• 8:32
  So how much marketing are they doing?
• 8:33
  How many deal registers are they doing?
• 8:34
  How engaged are they?
• 8:36
  You want that health score which we've spoken about in previous episodes?
• 8:39
  That would be a much better indicator because you're not going to wait three quarters.
• 8:43
  But yes, typically three quarters of zero revenue is inactive.
• 8:48
  Yeah, I think that's a good one, where you look at the partner base, who is inactive there, and what of course we are talking about a lot is how can you get in the conversation much quicker, like when they are not completely inactive yet, because then it's much easier to get them back on track.
• 9:05
  Sorry.
• 9:06
  The first rule of fixing a churn partner is don't let them churn.
• 9:09
  Right.
• 9:09
  That's got to be rule number one.
• 9:11
  So if you've got the leading indicators that allow you to catch them just before they churn, re energise, re-engage and redeliver, then suddenly you get out of this problem of 80% of your partners.
• 9:21
  And I must stress that is the biggest cost to a channel is all of that wasted effort, all of that wasted resources, recruiting partners that no longer deliver.
• 9:30
  And so, yeah, the first rule, catch them before they sleep.
• 9:34
  Yeah, 100% true.
• 9:35
  But let's say we have a use case where we're already a bit further down the line.
• 9:39
  So 80% of my partner programme is now inactive.
• 9:43
  Let's say we have 1000 partners in total in the programme, but only 200 who are driving significant revenue.
• 9:50
  How do you determine when you look at the inactive partner base, which ones are you going to approach as the first ones to try and reignite?
• 9:59
  Yeah, so I would almost go back to what we've discussed in previous episodes around recruitment.
• 10:03
  So the best place to start is your ideal partner profile.
• 10:06
  Right?
• 10:06
  And what's great if you have a trading history with these partners, is you probably, or you should have a lot of that information already.
• 10:13
  So your first calculation is do they fit what we are trying to recruit net new?
• 10:19
  That'd be a good place to start.
• 10:20
  The second criteria is what did they used to do?
• 10:24
  Because that's going to give you an idea of their potential.
• 10:26
  And the third criteria is why did they churn?
• 10:30
  Because as we've spoken about 99 times out of 100 is misalignment, miscommunication, no deadly deeds.
• 10:36
  But if it's the one in 100 where really you did something wrong, screwed a partner out of a deal, there's lots of bad blood, I would almost say, unless there's a massive upside.
• 10:46
  Just being a bit cynical.
• 10:48
  You're probably easier going to an easier patch and really mining that first before you take on this burden of, oh, my God, we've got to fix all this stuff, and it's really, really painful and there's lots of ego and lots of bad blood between us.
• 11:01
  Instead, there might be a much easier way to make it happen.
• 11:03
  Yeah, I think that's the most important piece to start with when you start talking to an inactive partner is really figuring out what was the reason why you left us or what was the reason that you became inactive?
• 11:16
  Like, dare to ask the question, open the conversation.
• 11:19
  And the better you do that, the more insights you will get from those partners as well because the better you really unwrap what was that actual reason?
• 11:27
  The better you can then reposition yourself to reactivate the partners eventually.
• 11:31
  Yeah, it's like the romcom 101, right?
• 11:34
  You want to remember the good times and understand the bad times, then you can heal the relationship, right?
• 11:39
  And I think you want to sort of approach the partnerships in that same way.
• 11:42
  Hey, remember all the success we have?
• 11:44
  Remember that ski trip that we went on because we closed all those big deals?
• 11:47
  That's really good, that gets the excitement and the warm stuff there.
• 11:50
  But you've also got to fix the underlying issues.
• 11:53
  Why didn't this work?
• 11:54
  And then from there, if possible, and sometimes you may find it's not possible and you just got to move on.
• 12:00
  You can then start to heal that process.
• 12:02
  You can then start to say, okay, you weren't excited by our product direction.
• 12:06
  Well, actually, here's our product direction now.
• 12:08
  How does this fit with you?
• 12:09
  Oh great, we're aligned and then we can start to go again.
• 12:12
  But yet if that underlining issue caused them to churn before, don't re-engage or don't try and bring them back in if you haven't solved that underlying issue now because it will just happen again.
• 12:23
  And guess what?
• 12:23
  Then you've put double the amount of resource into recruiting the same partner twice and they still joined anyway.
• 12:28
  Yeah.
• 12:29
  And I think if you do that, I actually really like that because you build a lot of trust by being open and honest with them.
• 12:34
  Like if indeed they give the reason.
• 12:36
  Like, I didn't like where the product was going and then you present the new product direction or you immediately say to them, sorry, that's where we were heading, but we're actually still heading in the same way.
• 12:49
  But in the future we plan to do things differently.
• 12:51
  But for now, maybe then it's best for you to focus your time as well.
• 12:56
  Shall we re-engage in six months or so when we are a bit further down the roadmap, et cetera, that can really build trust with a partner like, oh, you're cautious of my time as well.
• 13:05
  And then of course I want to talk to you again in a couple of months.
• 13:09
  Yeah, I love that.
• 13:11
  We've spoken a lot internally around. T here is no balance to honesty, right?
• 13:14
  And I think that's one of the real key things about partnerships and why I think we work in the best industry.
• 13:20
  Because you shouldn't be selling, you should be building.
• 13:23
  And building comes from a place of honesty.
• 13:24
  So if you haven't fixed those underlying issues, be open and say, look, we've not fixed them and maybe the partner says, well, okay, maybe it's worth a risk anyway because they're bought into the value or maybe they don't, but at least you have your integrity, right?
• 13:37
  And then yeah, in six months time when you have fixed it and you come back and say, by the way, we've now fixed it, we'd love to reconnect, they will really appreciate that because you've not wasted their time.
• 13:46
  Right.
• 13:46
  So it's so important that you are integral to yourself and integral to the partner because otherwise at some point you're going to break everything down and it's just not going to work.
• 13:55
  Yeah, 100%.
• 13:56
  Do you have some examples of other underlying issues you have seen in the past, like partners becoming inactive or what they share with vendors?
• 14:05
  Yeah, so we can sort of rank all of these by biggest opportunity.
• 14:09
  So the biggest one will be competitive displacement.
• 14:12
  Right.
• 14:12
  That is the number one reason that you see and by the way is the number one opportunity as well.
• 14:17
  It's the biggest threat and the biggest opportunity.
• 14:19
  So let's just take two big titans that compete all the time.
• 14:22
  We got Google and Microsoft.
• 14:24
  Well, Google develops a new product, they acquire a load of partners, start selling, then Microsoft innovates does their product and then they steal a load of land mass.
• 14:32
  Right.
• 14:32
  Used to work for Zoom, Microsoft teams, happened very much the same type of competition.
• 14:37
  And partners will focus their time where they feel they can be most successful and really good channel account managers will be really good at winning displacement, mind share, winning the partner over and taking all of that business.
• 14:50
  That's what a really good partner manager or a channel account manager will do.
• 14:53
  And so very often you will find that, oh, we used to do a lot of business with this partner and now we don't do any.
• 14:59
  Well, that's just because they managed to nail you and take all your business, that's a real bad thing.
• 15:03
  However, the upside is enormous, because what happens if you could play the same game and pull it all the way back?
• 15:07
  You're not just going to win your old business back, you're going to win your old business and your competitors business.
• 15:12
  And so there's huge upside.
• 15:14
  And so that's, for me, the number one reason and the number one opportunity.
• 15:17
  You want to retarget those partners.
• 15:19
  Yeah, that makes perfect sense indeed.
• 15:22
  Like, you might have lost them to a competitor, but you can also win them back from the competitor.
• 15:26
  And that's indeed like that continuous flow, right.
• 15:28
  Like, of your product direction, your company strategy, the margins you have in certain years or in certain partner programmes, et cetera, everything is changing all the time.
• 15:36
  So the dynamics of the market change as well, which brings continuous opportunity for you to actually reignite those inactive and sleeping partners.
• 15:44
  Yeah.
• 15:44
  The number two reason that I see is bad hiring.
• 15:48
  Right.
• 15:48
  You hire a channel account manager and they don't do a good job.
• 15:52
  They, for whatever reason don't gel with the product.
• 15:54
  Don't gel with the go to market.
• 15:55
  Don't gel with the partners.
• 15:57
  And their partners become frustrated by the time senior leadership understands what's going on.
• 16:01
  Because sales cycles in channel are very long by the time they exit that person and replace them could be 1224 months down the line.
• 16:09
  That partner might have fully churned by that point.
• 16:11
  And so that is a real opportunity, because if you make a good hire, it should be fairly easy to re-engage with those partners, hold your hands up, say, I'm really sorry, fix the relationship and go again, and then you can pull all that business back.
• 16:24
  So for me, the biggest two opportunities out there, competitive displacement or cam misalignment for a polite term.
• 16:31
  But once you realign the cam, once you get the right talent in and the right process and the right culture, then you can drive everything forward.
• 16:37
  Yeah, I think that last one is an important one indeed.
• 16:40
  And I think we're always talking together around taking accountability, and that's crucial there.
• 16:45
  Like, if there was a certain thing, if you maybe mishired indeed, and they are not happy with how they were treated for a certain period of time, take full accountability, apologise for it, explain how you're going to do it differently towards the future.
• 16:58
  Or another reason we spoke about around the product direction, if they were really unhappy with that, take accountability.
• 17:02
  Maybe you found out yourself as well that you want to go in a very different way.
• 17:07
  There like, position that strongly to them.
• 17:10
  And I think that's with everything, like, if you really found out what was the reason why they left, you take full accountability for it and from there you can really bring it forward again.
• 17:21
  You can start with a clean sheet.
• 17:21
  Yeah.
• 17:24
  And for me, accountability, that's the only way that you're going to solve the problem.
• 17:27
  Right.
• 17:27
  And I think it's accountability with the idea of fixing the issue.
• 17:31
  So in the example that we just gave around wrong cam hire, there's actually two levels of accountability in that.
• 17:37
  The first is we shouldn't have hired that cam, that's our mess up.
• 17:41
  And the second is, why did the partner not have the relationship or feel comfortable enough to escalate to senior channel leadership within the territory to say, hey, we're not enjoying this cam or this is not working for us, can we have a different cam?
• 17:53
  Oh, actually, there's two issues there.
• 17:55
  The one was they didn't have the escalation and one that the cam wasn't.
• 17:58
  Right.
• 17:58
  Oh, that's my double mess up.
• 18:00
  So how we've hired a new cam.
• 18:02
  And by the way, here's my phone number.
• 18:04
  Call me if you have any challenges.
• 18:06
  You're a really important partners to us and we were doing great things and we want to continue to do great things.
• 18:11
  So if you have any feedback, positive or negative, please reach out.
• 18:15
  You can just see that that's a real bonding moment where they go, your opinion is valued and we value you as a partner, so come and speak to me directly if there's a problem.
• 18:24
  That's why partnerships are so good.
• 18:26
  That's why channel is so good, because it's about fostering those relationships.
• 18:29
  Yeah, I think that's a really strong one, where you really position it like, you are so important to us, you can always reach out or call to me.
• 18:36
  And probably most partners will never do it, but the feeling that they can, and indeed, like when there is something wrong, maybe while they are a very important partner for you, that they can escalate somewhere.
• 18:46
  And it can be through your example, but it can also be a built in process, right, where you proactively.
• 18:51
  Tell your partners, hey, whenever you have something, you have feedback for a programme or company, whatever, this is the place where you can share this with us.
• 18:58
  I think that's a very strong thing to do.
• 19:00
  And again, builds more trust with the partner.
• 19:03
  Yeah.
• 19:03
  And the more trust that you build, the more you guarantee long term success at a sort of macro scale.
• 19:08
  Right.
• 19:08
  If your partners have a lot of distrust for you, they're never going to feed back and they're going to quietly churn.
• 19:13
  If the partners have a lot of trust for you and they are very annoyed, they will still come and speak to you.
• 19:18
  And that is the silent killer that silently going to sleep, that silently pulling away from the programme.
• 19:24
  That's what means that you have to recruit all these partners, do all this extra work, when actually, if you just had those open lines of communication, had that trust, you would need to do half of this.
• 19:33
  We could all hit target a lot easier and go on a long summer holiday, which is basically what we all want to do.
• 19:38
  Absolutely.
• 19:38
  There.
• 19:40
  I'm just thinking now.
• 19:42
  So let's say in your position, let's say you would be a vendor, you would have just had a talk with an inactive partner and you've really unwrapped what the problem was, you found out what it was, et cetera.
• 19:53
  And they say, well, actually, I'm very open to start again or to like, let's try to do a lot more business together.
• 19:59
  What are the next steps that you take to then make that partner successful again?
• 20:03
  Yeah, really simple.
• 20:04
  I go through all the same steps as if they were a brand new partner.
• 20:08
  So one of the things, especially if they've churned for quite a period of time, people go, oh, yeah, you know this, you used to do this, you sold this, and we'll skip steps one to six.
• 20:17
  Problem is, they don't know.
• 20:19
  And it's really easy as a vendor to have a very insular worldview.
• 20:22
  They sell lots of stuff, right?
• 20:24
  They've been selling lots of stuff.
• 20:25
  In the meantime, they've forgotten all about you.
• 20:28
  And so retake them through the programme.
• 20:30
  So we've just done a great session, five episodes on the recruitment to revenue gap.
• 20:35
  Take them through those five episodes, treat them as a brand new partner, onboard them, enable them coMARKET, co sell, get them through to the process of self sustainable revenue.
• 20:44
  They may be able to do it at a more accelerated rate than another partner, but at least if you take them through all the steps, you know for sure they know what they're doing.
• 20:53
  Yes.
• 20:53
  So you would almost say, just assume as if there is zero knowledge anymore within those partner.
• 20:58
  And by the way, high chance that might be true with employee turnover, et cetera.
• 21:03
  So really start from the beginning, maybe only not the contract, because it's still in place, but for the rest.
• 21:09
  Indeed, really, every single step, just do it again.
• 21:12
  Make sure you build them towards first revenue again.
• 21:14
  So from there, you know for sure that they are onboarden in the right way and they can be successful.
• 21:21
  Yeah.
• 21:21
  You want to maximise their chances for success, doubly so if they've already churned once, because they're a high risk of churning again.
• 21:27
  A partner that's never churned versus a partner that's churned once, the partner that's churned once is far more likely to churn again.
• 21:33
  So you want to handle them with kid gloves, right.
• 21:35
  Make sure they're going to be successful.
• 21:37
  And that means making sure your recruitment to revenue clap is bulletproof.
• 21:41
  And then playing defil's advocate a little bit, like, what if a partners is like, no, I know all this, even though if you know almost for sure that it's not the case, because it's been three years since you last time did some significant revenue.
• 21:53
  Like, how do you approach that?
• 21:54
  Yeah, so the first one, I would say, look, there's been lots of updates, I just want to make sure that you've got all the information and I would play it off more like that and try and sort of explain to that hey, things have moved on and we just want to take you through.
• 22:07
  And if there's still hard pushback I would have a serious conversation.
• 22:10
  I'd say, look, we want to make sure that you're going to be successful.
• 22:13
  You've churned once before.
• 22:14
  We would hate to be the reason that you churned again.
• 22:17
  And so we want to maximise our chances of success.
• 22:19
  And I'm sorry that means you're going to have to go through the twelve week recruitment to revenue gap.
• 22:23
  However, we're going to help you coMARKET.
• 22:25
  We're going to help you co sell, here's your time to value, here's the revenue you should be able to achieve.
• 22:30
  And it's the whole carrot again.
• 22:30
  Right?
• 22:31
  Then they go, okay, I understand why you're being bought in.
• 22:34
  And by the way, if they say they don't want to do it, don't onboard them, don't bother because they will churn again.
• 22:40
  And if that's the attitude that they're going to save your time, focus on partners who are bought into the process.
• 22:45
  Focus on partners who have the long term vision to be successful with you.
• 22:49
  And if they just want a quick win for a deal, don't bother.
• 22:52
  So first indeed really explain the impact of your re onboarding to the partner.
• 22:57
  Like explain why it's important for them and what the results you aim for are with that actually.
• 23:02
  But then indeed if you still get pushback that actually could be a very big notice to you or red flag where it's like, okay, don't bother.
• 23:08
  They say they want to reactivate but do they actually want because you know that for successful reactivation you need the full onboarding process again.
• 23:16
  Yeah.
• 23:16
  And sometimes just giving a partner that understanding like, hey look, we do this all the time.
• 23:22
  We've reactivated globally hundreds of partners in the last twelve months.
• 23:27
  We know this process works.
• 23:28
  And I appreciate for some of you you do understand it and you are three steps ahead and I'm asking you to be a little bit bored.
• 23:35
  But in twelve weeks time we're going to be closing deals, we're going to be opening opportunities.
• 23:39
  You guys are going to be hitting target.
• 23:41
  I'm going to be taking you out for beers to celebrate.
• 23:43
  I know I'm asking a lot for you but I promise you in six months time it's going to be well worth it.
• 23:47
  Yeah.
• 23:48
  Sell them the promise land a little bit as well.
• 23:50
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 23:50
  And look, the partners should be just as in it as you are because and by the way, if they're not then don't really if they're not in it and they don't really want to be successful with you, then go and find partners who want to be successful with you.
• 24:02
  Because you're looking for that collaboration.
• 24:04
  You're looking for that partnership.
• 24:04
  Right?
• 24:05
  That's why they're a partner.
• 24:07
  And so the idea.
• 24:08
  Very simply, is that they are bought into your success and you're bought into their success.
• 24:12
  If you approach it from that place of integrity, then they're going to be willing to put up with as long as your programme is fairly well designed, a decent amount of time for the opportunity that's ahead.
• 24:23
  Yeah, 100%.
• 24:24
  And then maybe on the other side.
• 24:26
  So you've had the conversation and you unwrapped why they became inactive.
• 24:31
  You took accountability, but then you asked the question, like, are you willing to reactivate?
• 24:36
  Like, are you willing to build business together again?
• 24:39
  If a partner says no?
• 24:41
  Yeah, well, I accept the answer to a degree, right.
• 24:46
  As long as I understand the context for the answer.
• 24:48
  So I think one of the mistakes people make in sales is that they let the customer or the partner qualify themselves out.
• 24:56
  That is not how qualifying out works.
• 24:58
  You qualify them out and you qualify them out by understanding the reasoning.
• 25:01
  They don't want to participate.
• 25:03
  So, for example, you are an on premise hardware solution.
• 25:06
  You speak to a partner who now only sells SAS.
• 25:09
  Well, that's a great reason that they don't want to re-engage.
• 25:12
  They only sell SAS.
• 25:14
  And so they've said, look, we're only interested in software.
• 25:16
  You do hardware, not interested anymore.
• 25:16
  Brilliant.
• 25:19
  Completely understand.
• 25:19
  Good luck.
• 25:21
  If anything changes down the line, let us know.
• 25:23
  But I completely understand your reasoning.
• 25:25
  That's a great reason not to reconnect, it's a great reason not to build that partnerships going forward, but you need to understand the reasoning so you can qualify them out.
• 25:35
  Sorry.
• 25:35
  No worries.
• 25:37
  And I think that's also, like a reactivation conversation is always relevant, because either you can reactivate them and you get a potential good partnership again, or otherwise you take the lessons and you implement them in your partner programme.
• 25:51
  So probably when you're going to do a lot of reactivation conversations, you'll get a lot of learnings that are not just for one specific partner, but actually there is a lot of overlap, probably.
• 26:01
  And if you take those lessons, implement it and then take it for your partner programme, you will get better anyhow, no matter what the answers are of the partners.
• 26:09
  Yeah, ask any CEO of a unicorn, do you get enough customer feedback?
• 26:13
  They will all answer no.
• 26:14
  They all want more feedback.
• 26:16
  The reason is because with that feedback, they can put projects together to make their solution, make their pricing, their go to market, all of it.
• 26:23
  Make it work better.
• 26:24
  Feedback is critical and feedback in the channel is the one thing that we miss loads of, because we get feedback from an end user perspective.
• 26:33
  But partners quietly disappear and so we hear the voice of the converted, right?
• 26:39
  We hear the good news and the loud partners, because they're the ones we're dealing with.
• 26:43
  And sometimes you can get that echo chamber go, bloody amazing.
• 26:46
  Everyone wants to sell us.
• 26:47
  Well, no, only the people selling talk to you and so it seems like the whole world is selling you.
• 26:52
  It seems like that's everyone, but no, there's thousands of partners that aren't and have chosen not to.
• 26:57
  They're the ones you want the feedback from, they're the ones who you can then go, oh, yeah, we didn't know our competitors doing this.
• 27:03
  And actually, that's a really creative way of going to market.
• 27:06
  I need to feed that back to products so that they can start to build something similar and suddenly you can see how innovation and competition drives progress.
• 27:14
  Yeah, it's a great point.
• 27:16
  Almost every vendor, especially when the partner programme is a bit bigger, has a partner council, but there it's your power users, right.
• 27:22
  Your champions who are constantly working with your product.
• 27:25
  Like, how cool would it be to have a partner council, but then maybe more in a one on one with partners who decided to leave you, or with partners who are not doing that much business.
• 27:33
  And that's where you will learn a lot for your programme.
• 27:36
  Yeah.
• 27:36
  You're going to get very different feedback from your wife than your ex girlfriend.
• 27:39
  Right.
• 27:39
  Both valid but different, and it's important that you get the balance across.
• 27:43
  All awesome.
• 27:44
  Appreciate it, I think.
• 27:46
  Good episode today.
• 27:48
  We had a deep dive into how to reactivate partners that actually became inactive, or the sleeping partner, so to say, think crucial indeed, to be very open, try to really unwrap what led them to being inactive, actually take accountability for it.
• 28:04
  Then if they say, yes, I want to be re onboarded, actually re onboarden them completely from the start.
• 28:10
  And if they say no, take the lesson and make sure you improve your partner programme as such.
• 28:14
  Thank you for sharing again today, Alex, and thank you to our listeners and see you next week.