Learning to run before you can walk

Dave Robertson takes us through what his company learned when trying to develop a channel strategy

Over the past couple of years, we have developed a global channel network including partners in the Americas, the UK and continental Europe, the Middle East and south-east Asia. Our channel network is making a major contribution and I like to think our partners are benefiting too.

It has been a steep learning curve; choosing the right sales partners is no small task.

We have grown organically through word of mouth and our traditional customer base of developers and software engineers is by nature wary of salespeople. So it won't come as a surprise to learn that we weren't sales-centric at the start.

In the early days of our partner strategy, we let the rope out slowly. Would our partners be able to talk about our products and company like we could? Yet our concerns proved unfounded. We were worried about losing control but should have realised how much we could trust our partners at an earlier stage.

We have since discovered that the right channel partners are as good as – and sometimes better than – having our own employees in different countries.

Although could have done some things more quickly, we reduced the risk of error by moving steadily. Now, we can engage with new sales partners much faster because we understand the process so much better.

Also, many vendors like to think their products are unique but the ways that other companies do things tend to be very similar. And people buy from people, although the easiest-to-use product still needs support.

And in a global market it is hard for a vendor to answer all those local questions properly on its own. This is where local partners can really add value, because they can match their understanding of the end-user environment to the value of the vendor's software.

While you can have a standard partner model, local markets differ. Choose the partner that is a good fit for the target demographic; in one market that might be a LAR, in another a small VAR.

Finding these partners takes leg work. You can draw up a target list, but the shortlist will result in a lot of conversations with other vendors, customers and market influencers. It's critical as well to segment your target partner list to achieve accurate profiling and the right relationships.

The right partners share certain attributes. We look for partners committed to the long term that will invest time and effort in the relationship (not partners who happen to have a need to meet a couple of quick sales opportunities and we never hear from again).

We look for partners with a certain amount of energy and enthusiasm, and ones that are constantly challenging us and coming up with their own ideas are our favourites.

In return, we have to reward that commitment: we need to provide the right level of incentives and have an open dialogue with them. We try to avoid the "them and us" situation that can so often arise between the vendor and channel. After all, we all have the same goals.

Understand the cultural differences. The way of doing business is different in each country and international companies need their local partners to provide that kind of advice. This is particularly important in the Asia-Pacific region, where the culture and etiquette can be most different from what we are used to in Europe. Our partners are invaluable to doing business there.

Apart from appropriate use of language and images, sales and marketing style can be different. For instance, in south-east Asia phrases such as "hitting the target" and "killing the competition" just don't work.

And in Israel, our local partner gets many of its leads through its Wikipedia page, because it is a market where people tend to know each other and so personal backgrounds and history matter more.

Vertical market approaches differ too. For instance, experience in the New York financial services market can fail to translate to London, where the market landscape and regulations are different.

On the other hand, a track record in the Detroit automotive market will be helpful in Munich because of the standardisation of approach in that industry.

Games development is a global market, with the exception of China and Korea, where a different games development culture has developed.

It's important that we help partners deal with these differences and also to map our messages to their local markets too. We are often just one of many tools in their bag, so our job is to try to stay top of mind.

When we started this journey a few years ago, even though we had a clear strategy, I could not have guessed all these steps along the way.

And perhaps that is the final lesson: we have learned that while it is good to have a road map, it is just as important to be open to possibilities and adapt to the local market.

That is the only way that you can create a channel network that works for the partners, the vendor, and above all the customer.

Dave Robertson is vice president of channel and product strategy at Perforce Software