You’ve got programs in place that have a wealth of partners. Only a fraction of those partners are bringing revenue to the table and of those a mere handful are collaborating with you at a level that accounts for a significant portion of your channel revenue.
What Is the Transactional Channel of the Partner Ecosystem?
It’s your classic partner program with traditional tiering based on performance. It’s the program everyone has in place today—and it’s not a bad model!
It also will never go away.
Channel partners have heard a lot about new partner types invading what has comfortably been their terrain for many years. The transactional segment of your partner ecosystem plays the largest role in sourcing, producing, distributing and selling your products and services. This may include:
- VARs
- MSPs
- MSSPs
- CSPs
- Dealers Franchises
- Distributors
- Wholesale OEMs
When you work on your partner ecosystem, transactional channels are a great place to start because you can see some quick wins—even with minimal strides in partner data collection. In fact, those partners that have spent years disengaged may actually find a home somewhere else in the program that has, up until now, only pushed them to sell.
What Areas Should You Focus on With Transactional Programs?
Here are three areas of focus that we’ve seen return positive results for clients with transactional programs:
1. Optimization: Fixing or testing current programs in place to improve segmentation and strategy.
Transactional channel programs don’t change too often—but they should. Are you evaluating how your investments are performing? Without ongoing testing or strategy evolution, programs can become stagnant and see lagging participation and revenue.
2. Expansion: Evaluating your high-performing partners to create ideal partner profiles you can use to recruit look-a-like partners.
First and foremost: Expanding a partner network can be costly. Recruiting and onboarding alone account for a significant portion of a partner programs' marketing budget so it’s critical to make sure you’re bringing in the right companies.
3. Reactivation: Initiative, program or win-back campaign for the partners who are enrolled but haven’t performed recently (or ever).
Once you understand why these partners stopped working with you, you can implement a few efforts (e.g., communications, event participation, branding, “sell one” programs and re-tooled
Related: Check out a real-world example of how a tech hardware manufacturer saw 400% ROI with their global reps.
By focusing on optimization, expansion and reactivation, you can have a big impact (and quickly) on your transactional partners. This will also set your non-transacting partners who help you fill your funnel and retain your business for success.