Boosting success through partner education

Thinking about investing in a partner education program to strengthen relationships with your company’s strategic partners to your mutual benefit? This article serves to provide a closer look at partnership education programs. We will examine the value these programs bring to companies that implement them as well as ways in which you can bolster your partnership program through education.

Let’s dive in.

What is partner education?

Partner education is a type of initiative taken by a company to provide strategic affiliate entities such as service providers, resellers, and vendors with the knowledge and resources they need to effectively resell the company’s product and services and ultimately contribute to growing the company’s revenue.

Done with the primary focus of enabling partners to contribute to the company’s revenue growth through their respective areas of expertise, partner education emerged as a pseudo-variant of sales enablement where the aim is to give channel partners the resources they need to perform well and leave a mark on the company.

While not every company has a strategic channel partner, those that do stand to benefit from an increase in the time it takes to close deals as well as the overall quality of the prospects who enter your sales or upselling cycle.

The logic is that the more informed your channel partners are about your products or services and why they are valuable to the kind of audience you’re targeting, the easier it will be for them to close your pipeline faster.

Identifying partner education needs

Before you can build out a partner education program, you must first identify and understand the areas where your partners might need help. E.g., they might lack a clear understanding of the value propositions of your product or service, or maybe they have difficulty communicating it clearly to your target audience.

If you have an asset to which new features are added frequently, such as a software product, it can be difficult for partners to keep up with the pace and stay on top of your product’s unique selling points.

In another scenario, your partners may lack the content or material needed to adequately package and transmit that knowledge to their audience.

Recognizing these use cases in your business will serve as a clear indication of whether you should equip strategic partners with the content needed to sell your products and services with ease.

Developing partner education programs

There are a few steps that you must carry out to develop a partner education program.

1. 1. Set an objective
   2. Determine the needs of your channel partner
   3. Define the content needed for your channel partners
   4. Choose an education and distribution channel
   5. Collect feedback on the impact of your program and iterate

Before we take a closer look at each step in the process, let us first examine different ways in which you can tailor the learning experience you provide to partners based on their specific needs.

Customizing education for partner types

Learning is highly personal. For that reason, there is no one-size-fits-all approach or one single best way to distribute information.

With that in mind, it is imperative that companies find strategies to tailor how they educate their partners based on the kind of information that needs to be shared as well as the kind of learners your partners are.

Failure to meet partners where they are and educate them in the best way possible can jeopardize the quality of partner programs that you roll out, thus in the end impacting your bottom line.

Let’s take a look at some of the best practices of partner education.

3 best practices for partner education

Below, we present three best practices you should incorporate into your partner education program.

1.   Pick a goal

The very first step involves creating a clear, measurable goal for your partnership program. Since partner programs are usually revenue-driven, come up with a goal that is revenue-centric. That way, once you implement the program, you can look at the results and tie the impact of your program to the amount of money a company brings in. In doing so, it is important to set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that provide insight into how well the initiatives you’re carrying out help you to reach your goal.

In the case of partner programs, these KPIs consist of metrics such as qualified pipeline, closed deals, win rate, and affiliate net new revenue, among others. These are all revenue-centric concepts that have a direct impact on your business and act as leading indicators of the success of your partner education program.

2.   Define your content

Once you know your goal, the next step is to figure out the information you’d like to share with your partners. The content you share must be impactful and contribute to realizing the goal you set for your program.

3.   Choose a distribution channel

A huge part of the success of your partner education program relies on the tools and resources that you use to distribute information to your team. Technology plays a significant role in the process. For example, it can enhance training programs by hosting live interactive sessions and video-based learning and development (L&D).

But before we speak about the tools you can use to help you put on a successful partner training program, let us first take a closer look at some more ways you can measure the impact of your partner training program.

Measuring the impact of partner education

Apart from revenue, there are other ways in which you can measure the success of your partner education program.

These include:

Sales velocity

This refers to the speed at which your partners are closing deals for your business. The more you train and equip them with the resources they need, the easier it should be for them to close deals for your company.

Motivation

Partners that receive training are more likely to feel motivated to sell your product. This is because they feel that they are being given the material and knowledge they need to perform well.

Qualified pipeline

The more your partners understand your product, the easier it is for them to target prospects for your company that are likely to close. This has a direct impact on the quality of prospects being brought to your company as well as your bottom line.

Technology and tools for partner education

When it comes to partner education, technology is an ally that can help you deliver a comprehensive learning experience that enables you to successfully educate partners.

Nowadays, companies can benefit from live streaming solutions that allow them to connect with people from all over the world and distribute information to them.

This is especially useful for companies with geographically dispersed partners.

Let’s take a look at how Kaltura’s training platform can help companies like yours nail your partner education program.

Create, manage, and measure your partner education program on a single platform with Kaltura Events.

Kaltura is a cloud-based video platform that provides streaming and broadcast solutions suitable for education, training, upskilling, and reskilling.

Using Kaltura’s video software, you can put on training sessions, webinars, hackathons, and boot camps to drive engaging and memorable learning experiences for your partners.

These interactive sessions allow for a host of learning tools and assets such as multimedia playlists, slide decks, polls, quizzes, and moderated Q&A to give you everything you need to educate your partners and equip them with the tools they need to successfully sell your products and services.

Furthermore, you can also track registrations, attendance, learning metrics, streaming performance, viewing behavior, and attendee engagement, as well as live and VOD analytics with Kaltura’s analytics dashboard. Using these metrics, you will get a clearer picture as to how your partner education program is performing.

Summary

Delivering a partner training program is never easy. But with the right tools and technology to support you, you can successfully educate your partners and ensure that they have the knowledge and resources needed to sell your products and services like a pro.

Discover more about how Kaltura Events can help you nail your partner training program and set yourself up for success.