Perfecting the Story Behind Your Partner Program

Why your partner program needs to have a story to tell

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Every company has a story to tell that can connect prospective customers to their brand. Having a story is no different when it comes to your partner program. What is the purpose of your partner program? Why should partners come to you with new opportunities instead of the others that they work with? Storytelling is a critical piece to uncovering the best candidates for your partner program or getting executive buy-in.  At face value, it seems simple enough to describe what your program offers and why partners should join, but differentiating and extracting material value out of a program is one of the hardest things to do.  According to Forrester, upward of 70% of global revenue comes from third-party channels. Why do we often come across stories of partner programs that don’t meet up to their expectations for such a critical part of a company's revenue stream?

Partner programs come in all shapes and sizes, so an easy way to get your program lost in a sea of thousands is by overlooking product-market fit. The approach here is quality over quantity. If you cannot articulate your partner program’s story, your value proposition to partners is unclear and not compelling enough to dedicate resources. So how do you come up with a story for your partner program? One best practice to help frame your partner program story is to use the three-act structure commonly used by novelists and screenwriters. 

In a three-act structure, the story is broken down into three primary acts:

1. The Setup 

2. The Confrontation

3. The Resolution

Act 1: The Setup

The first act sets the stage for your program’s origin story.  In this act, it is up to you to build your partner program's foundation by providing quantitative information on the industry that your current or prospective partners are in and how they will be successful when both parties are aligned properly. By doing so, you should be able to provide any of the following:

1. The problem that the partnership intends to solve

2. Examples of customers that you and your partners have been able to work with

3. Industries and use cases that can be addressed as a result of the partnership

Act 2: The Confrontation

In the second act of your story, you focus on the partner’s journey - or the pursuit of their business goal - and identify challenges or roadblocks they have confronted. This is typically the longest act of the story and where you will be spending a majority of your time with the partner. While offering financial incentives for referrals is typically the first thing that comes to mind, you want to focus on how your partner program can give the partner a better chance of successfully achieving their business goal. It would help if you communicated how the partnership would add material value to the partner. One way to help craft your story of a partner-first approach is to follow the Jobs-to-be-Done framework.

The Jobs-to-be-Done framework is built around categorizing, defining, capturing, and organizing all of your partners’ needs. Depending on the partner's priority, this can come from a sales, service, or product-driven need.  Once you’ve decided on which approach is best suited for the partner and which jobs they need help with, then the shift would focus on whether the partnership can address the following:

1. Unmet internal partner needs that have been unapproachable or avoided

2. Untapped new customer segments in new markets

3. New product or service offerings as a result of a partnership

4. New marketing strategy as a result of a partnership

5. Quantitative customer data relevant to the partner

Once you have identified and addressed these challenges and goals, you can move to the story's final stage.

Act 3: The Resolution

In the final act, this is your moment to deliver what the partner has been waiting for. You’ve set the stage, spent time and resources uncovering the challenges and roadblocks that your partner is facing, and now you will deliver why your partner program is the one that holds the key to unlocking a barrier to their success. At this point, you’ve highlighted the resources necessary to achieve this outcome, along with a pragmatic approach towards measuring both qualitative and quantitative results. The resulting partnership would be an offering beyond the sum of what you and your partner offer individually that can unlock exponential growth and create a competitive advantage. Partners want to understand what it will take to achieve this outcome, so your resolution cannot be overcomplicated or time-consuming. 

Remember, partner programs exist to create a flywheel effect that accelerates growth, generates revenue, adds new customers, and helps build a loyal community of users. When you look at your partner program, does it tell the story that would attract the right partners? Is there enough value delivered by the partner program so that all parties involved are highly motivated to collaborate long-term? A successful partner program story can be instrumental in your business growth and customers' success when executed correctly.

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