Partnerships as a go to market strategy are growing in popularity, with many viewing the go to market strategy as one of the most cost effective ways to drive meaningful revenue in a business. However, partnership teams are still largely underfunded with many having to fight for budget to market, and build their teams out. Another area in which they are constantly having to prove the ROI of an investment is in partnership tooling.

A PRM is usually the most common software solution that partnership teams need to organize and drive efficiency in their partnership program. It also typically represents the biggest investment from a dollar perspective, and this often times needs the most robust business case built in order to get in across the line with your internal teams.

In this blog post we will review a few key things that indicate that its high time that you acquire a PRM for your program, how to build out a business case that will help you get a purchase across the line, and finally looking at how you should select the PRM solution which is the best fit for you 

For anyone that is beginning to look at PRM solutions and wants some help pitching it to their executive team, this ones for you.

When is the right time to buy a PRM?

Before diving into how to write a business case that will help you get a PRM purchase over the line, it's worth first exploring how you know when its time to buy a PRM. There are a few things that you need to take into account when determining whether now is the time for you to acquire a PRM.

Scaling Partner Ecosystem

The first and perhaps the most obvious reason that now is the time to invest in a PRM is the growing size of your partnership program.

One of the main benefits that a PRM brings to your partner program is the overall organization and scalability of your ecosystem, and so there needs to be a certain number of partners present for it to make sense.

A new partner program where you have just started to sign partners, probably doesn't need a PRM as a lot of your partner program can be done manually by your singular partner manager, however once it reaches the stage where you are getting flustered with the amount of manual activity due to how many partners you have as part of your program, now would be time to invest in a PRM solution.

Inefficient Processes

Identifying when your partner program's growth potential is hindered by inefficient processes is a key indicator that a Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solution is necessary. Let's delve deeper into this issue:

For instance, imagine a scenario where you rely on sending recorded training videos to partner sales teams, but there's no clear method to track who has actually viewed them. This lack of visibility poses a significant obstacle to your program's growth. When there's no mechanism in place to track training completion, it becomes challenging to assess which partners are up to speed with your product offerings. This lack of knowledge hampers your ability to prioritize follow-ups and determine who requires additional training to maximize their potential.

Without a way to track training progress, you may unknowingly hinder the overall growth of your program. The absence of valuable insights on partner engagement and training completion leaves you in the dark about your partners' readiness to promote and sell your products effectively.

Absence of valuable insights on partner engagement and training completion leaves you in the dark about your partners' readiness to promote and sell your products effectively.

Limited Partner Engagement and Enablement

Another undeniable indication that it may be time to invest in a Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solution is closely tied to the behaviors exhibited by your signed partners. If you observe limited engagement from your partners with your program, it could suggest that you are not providing them with the necessary resources to thrive.

Many partners, particularly their sales teams, seek simplicity and streamlined processes within a program. If your partnership approach relies heavily on manual emails, additional workarounds, and complex procedures, it can lead to frustration and, consequently, a lack of overall engagement.

When a lack of partner engagement becomes the norm, it becomes imperative to consider implementing a PRM. A PRM serves as a centralized platform that offers a comprehensive suite of resources tailored to the needs of your partners and their sales teams.

By adopting a PRM, you create a one-stop-shop where partners can easily access the tools, training materials, marketing assets, and relevant information they require to effectively engage with your program. The convenience and efficiency offered by a PRM significantly reduce the barriers to partner participation, fostering a more engaging and collaborative partnership experience.

The convenience and efficiency offered by a PRM significantly reduce the barriers to partner participation, fostering a more engaging and collaborative partnership experience.

Crafting a compelling ROI story for your executives

Having assessed your partnership program based on the factors mentioned earlier, you have reached the conclusion that implementing a PRM is essential for driving your partnership program forward. 

Now, the next crucial step is obtaining budgetary approval from your executive team to fund the necessary software investment. 

As a partner manager, building a compelling business case becomes paramount to convince the executive team of the need for a PRM. It is crucial to align your case with the three key factors that executive teams typically prioritize: growth, risk, and organizational efficiency.

While building a business case for a PRM, it is crucial to align your case with the three key factors that executive teams typically prioritize: Growth, Risk, and Efficiency.

Here's how you can address each of these factors as you build out your business case

Growth

As a partnership team, your main goal is to drive net new revenue for the business. This objective should be at the forefront when presenting a business case for investing in a PRM. Emphasize the potential revenue generation that will result from implementing a PRM to your executive team. When explaining the benefits of a PRM to your executive team, focus on the following key points:

Enhanced Partner Engagement and Product Understanding

A PRM provides better training and enablement for partners, leading to increased engagement. With comprehensive training resources and centralized access to information within the PRM, partners gain a deeper understanding of your product or solution. This equips them to effectively pitch and promote your offerings during sales calls, resulting in higher conversion rates and increased revenue.

Expansion of Partner Base

Implementing a PRM facilitates the expansion of your partner base. The PRM streamlines processes, automates workflows, and enables efficient onboarding, making it easier to recruit and onboard new partners. By increasing the number of partners in your program, you broaden your reach and market penetration potential, creating opportunities for additional revenue generation through collaborative partnerships.

Improved Partner Performance

A PRM enhances partner performance, leading to increased revenue. By providing partners with necessary resources, support, and real-time visibility into sales opportunities, a PRM empowers them to be more effective in their sales efforts. This improved partner performance translates into accelerated deal cycles, improved lead conversion rates, and ultimately, a positive impact on net new revenue generation.

To strengthen your case, consider utilizing data and metrics to quantify the potential impact of a PRM implementation. Gather information on the performance improvements experienced by organizations that have adopted PRM solutions, such as increased sales productivity, revenue growth rates, and partner satisfaction levels. Highlight success stories and case studies to demonstrate the direct correlation between PRM usage and revenue generation.

Risk

An additional factor that your executive team is going to have a keen interest in is maintaining the overall reputation of your business. As it pertains to how a PRM creates less risk for your organization it does so in a number of ways.

Reputational Risk

If you operate a manual partner program, it's likely that certain manual processes are causing frustration within your partner ecosystem. This frustration can manifest in various ways, such as the need to manually register deals via email or a lack of sufficient enablement material. 

Regardless of the specific manifestation, partners becoming frustrated can lead to their departure from your program and the spread of cautionary tales to other potential partners. To maintain a healthy and viable partner program, it's crucial to prioritize delivering the best possible partner experience.

Financial Risk

When running a partner program that involves complex partners like resellers or referral partners, it's highly probable that there is a commercial arrangement in place between your organizations. Without a robust method to capture deals and track owed payments, you may encounter financial issues, including delays in payments and owed amounts to partners. These financial challenges can arise and potentially strain relationships with partners.

Employee Satisfaction Risk

Executives should be concerned about the well-being of the individuals working in your partner program. Relying heavily on manual processes places excessive stress on your partner team, which can result in dissatisfied employees and low morale.

As an executive, it's crucial to prioritize employee well-being, and reducing the burden of manual processes can contribute to a healthier and more productive work environment. This consideration can serve as an additional justification for implementing improvements as part of your use case.

Efficiency

The final factor that you should layer into your business case for your executive team is the efficiency gains you expect to see as a result of bringing in a PRM solution. When thinking about efficiency think about the cost of the PRM vs what it would look like if you continued to run a partner program manually.

Some factors to consider include:

Headcount

The most obvious efficiency saving that you should point out is if you continue to require your partner team to run a ton of processes manually, as your partner program grows the only alternative is to hire more people to service your partners. The benefit of a PRM is systemizing and automating a lot of the manual things that your partner team is doing, and thus preventing the need to continually hire headcount.

Partner Efficiency

The benefits of acquiring a PRM extend beyond improving the efficiency of your partner teams. It also results in faster partner activation, as they no longer have to rely solely on partner managers to obtain the necessary information.

By implementing a PRM, partners gain the ability to self-serve information, accessing the relevant resources they need whenever they require them. This empowerment leads to a better partner experience and accelerates their ability to engage and contribute to your partnership program.

With self-service capabilities, partners can quickly access training materials, marketing assets, product information, and other relevant resources within the PRM platform. They no longer need to wait for partner managers to provide the information they seek, enabling them to proactively gather the right information at their convenience.

This self-serve approach not only saves time but also increases partner autonomy and effectiveness. Partners can access critical information when they need it, allowing them to make informed decisions and take immediate action. This leads to a more seamless and efficient partnership experience, enhancing their overall satisfaction and engagement with your program.

Internal processes

Implementing a PRM not only brings efficiencies to your partner teams but also benefits other internal team members within your organization.

In a partner program, the involvement of various departments such as finance and sales is crucial for its success. However, relying on manual processes puts undue burden on these internal teams.

For instance, consider your sales team, to whom you manually hand off leads along with accompanying information. As your partner program grows, this manual handoff process becomes increasingly burdensome and time-consuming.

By implementing a PRM, you can automate many of these processes, alleviating the strain on your internal teams. Automating lead distribution and information sharing through the PRM platform streamlines the workflow, allowing your sales team to access leads and corresponding details seamlessly.

What PRM should you choose?

Congratulations you have gotten the go ahead to go out and purchase a PRM solution.

Your next step is to choose a vendor who is going to be the best fit for you. There are a number of PRM solutions available in the market, and so you should take a long hard look at what are the things that are needed for you.

In considering which PRM is the best fit you should look at the following:

Longevity

Although you have just made the decision to buy a PRM, you need to think about the solution you purchase as one that can be used as your program gets larger and larger.

In order to choose the best fit you need to take into account whether it has the right features and functionality that enable it to support your partner ecosystem now, and in the future when you add more and more partners to your program.

Using a solution like Pronto, you are able to add additional features and functionalities as your program scales, ensuring that you have everything you need for a new partner program, but also the necessary features that are going to be important once your program hits scale.

Customization

In addition to seeking a solution that can evolve and scale with your partner program, it's also crucial to assess the degree of customization offered by your preferred PRM.

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Many PRM solutions available in the market present you with a platform that is all-inclusive, which often leaves no room for customization according to your specific needs. This can result in you paying a significant amount for a solution that's comprehensive when you might only need a portion of its features at a given time.

However, with solutions like Pronto, you have the flexibility to incorporate additional features and functionalities as your program expands. This ensures you purchase what you need and scale up when required.

Moreover, it's vital to consider the various partner types you might want to incorporate into your program in the future and if the platform you're choosing aligns with these partners' needs.

Once more, the advantage of a solution like Pronto lies in its customization capabilities. It can be tailored based on the specific profile of the partner, providing a personalized journey based on the partner's unique requirements. This guarantees that as you introduce additional partner types to your program, you can be confident that your PRM will continue to be a suitable fit for you.

Innovation

One crucial factor to consider when selecting a platform is the extent of innovation the considered PRM (Partner Relationship Management) solution has incorporated to enhance the overall partner experience.

According to Canalys, only about 30% of businesses are currently adopting PRMs, implying that there is a need for novel and inventive solutions to elevate this figure and foster the optimal experience for partners.

Some traditional PRM systems, unfortunately, haven't changed their approach to addressing this need, and this is a crucial factor to bear in mind before making your purchase.

However, when considering platforms like Pronto, you'll find they are directly tackling the PRMs' inefficiencies by introducing innovative features. For instance, they incorporate PRM actions into instant messaging and CRM systems to make the user experience, particularly for your partner sales team, as seamless as possible.

In considering which PRM is the best fit you should look at the following aspects: Longevity, Customization, and Innovation.

Conclusion

In summary, a PRM can be an excellent supplement to your partner program, bringing much-needed efficiencies and organization as your program expands.

However, partner teams often operate with limited funding, necessitating a robust business case to justify the need for a PRM solution. To build this case, it's crucial to come equipped with arguments that will resonate with your executive team and justify the extra expenditure.

As discussed in this article, your business case should focus on key aspects such as your partner program's overall growth, the potential risks to the company of not investing in a PRM, and the operational efficiencies that a PRM can bring about.By doing this, you will be able to convincingly articulate the need for a PRM solution and justify the cost. 

Once you secure approval from your executive team, remember to explore all available PRM options to find the one that best suits your needs.

If you seek a solution that's both effective and adaptable enough to scale with your expanding program, Pronto is the ideal choice. Pronto merges a top-tier PRM with the capability to scale up or down according to your requirements.

To gain a better understanding of how the platform might be the perfect fit for you, schedule a demo. For additional insights on partnerships, please visit our blog.