08 - How Nurturing Partners is Crucial to Untapped Channel Sales

This production is brought to you by Magentrix. Magentrix is a pioneer in platforms for partner ecosystem management and partner relationship management. This is Partner Relationship Management, the ultimate channel sales podcast. Welcome to another episode of the Ultimate Channel Sales Podcast. I'm your host, Paul Bird. So according to Accenture, only 7% of partners achieved 65% or more of their revenue targets last year. With that said, today we're going to discuss how nurturing partners is crucial to unlocking untapped channel sales revenue. And there's two main reasons why you want to do this. Acquiring new channel partners to meet your channel sales goals can cost you more than actually retaining the ones you currently have. How partners represent you to customers and how they deal with them ultimately reflects you. So make sure that your advocates are well-equipped to represent you properly and ultimately generate the sale. Preparing channel partners for success really involves taking a customized approach. You know, consistent attentiveness, active listening skills, work just doesn't end after partners are onboarded. It's really a continuous effort. So we need to pay attention in aligning our goals and practicing transparency, to really create a red carpet and personalized experience. So let's dive into this discussion. Our guest today, Ben Cornett. Ben is a successful sales and marketing pro. He's got a career that spans more than 20 years. In fact, he holds a doctorate in business administration from North Central University with his primary focus on partner marketing. And he's an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University. So you could really call him the doctor of partner marketing. He's currently at Verified First with kind of a laser focus on partner marketing efforts and ultimately driving revenue for channel sales. He's with us today to share his insights on nurturing partners and why it's critical accessing untapped channel sales. So welcome to the show, Ben. It's great to have you. Yeah, thanks, Paul. And good to be here. And those are so kind words. You know, I'm looking forward to our chat today. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I gave a little bit of your background, but you've definitely had an interesting career thus far. Maybe you could share a little bit of your background. A little bit more about about you and and tell us about what you're what you're doing at Verified First. Sure, sure. So I kind of got exposed to the whole idea of business development marketing, I don't know, about 20, 22 years ago, and that career started kind of interesting. I fell into it right as I fast forward my career over a number of years and get into, you know, the more recent times recently, you know, I was head of partner marketing for a company called Docutech out of Southeast Idaho here in the United States. And in that role, you know, my primary function was really to help build more document generation out of partners that they call loan origination systems. So the likes of Black Knight and Encompass and other loan origination platforms in the U.S. And so that kind of grew. And then shortly after that, my wife and I moved back to close to hometown here in Boise, Idaho, at the Capitol. And I took on a partner marketing role at that time, head up the partner marketing team. And I took on a partner marketing team for a company called Count, K-O-U-N-T. Count is where I was first introduced, I think, Paul, that's when we first met. Yeah, it is. That's a while ago. Yeah, it's a little while ago. But anyway, at that time, my role was to try to take and capitalize on some of our partners in the ecosystem that were, you know, Count is an anti-fraud solution for card not present payment fraud. And our challenge at that time was trying to keep up with our partners that were trying to sell our solutions. And, you know, really, in that experience was trying to pull together a partner program that would give the content that our partners needed because we would sell with them into the deals that we were co-selling with them into these large, you know, enterprise like Wish and Staples and up in Canada, you got the source. They're all using our solution through their payment provider. And so we really needed to fold that into a single platform to be more effective and, of course, to nurture. Our partners a little bit more effectively. And so I got to lead that up. And then just this year, Count announced an acquisition there with Equifax. And today here at Verified First, I came to Verified First about two years ago. And at Verified First, they're basically a background screening technology company. We're a SaaS provider. And kind of like DocuTech and Count, we resell our solution within a partner ecosystem, within a platform. We're connected. It's like you go to McDonald's, you get a Coke worldwide. And so we want to make it so when people are in an HR or talent acquisition platform that we're there. When they go there, they see us as a solution for being their background screening, drug testing, verifications provider. So as a result, you know, we're growing that partner ecosystem again, structuring it so it brings the maximum value to our organization and best experience for the users. For our partners, first, that's kind of my role. You know, and then making it really good to make sure our mission is accomplished. You know, our mission is really to make companies great by helping them making effective hiring decisions. And background screening, verification, you know, employment and education, drug testing are kind of the initial processes to make sure you're hiring the right people. So you have the best experience. But I know that's a lot, Paul. So I gave you my background, maybe a little bit more than you wanted. No, that's awesome. A lot of things I already knew. And a few things that I learned more. And, you know, that strategic partnership that you've built at Count and Verified First and other places, you know, it's much more than a transactional style relationship that's kind of born from, you know, necessity to generate revenue. Can you think of, you know, the top three kind of best practices that you could share for, you know, effectively nurturing those channel partners and anything that you've seen that that really works best? Yeah, I think, you know, while revenue is important to us in all of those examples I gave you, you know, revenue is not the end all be all. You know, especially, you know, if I think about this year, this year was a weird year. Well, I should say this year, last year, 2020, you know, COVID hit. It's interesting with Verified First because we are a hiring platform. You know, we're basically a technology solution depends on hiring. COVID hit, hiring slowed down, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, what happened, though, was quite interesting because. Our growth continued the strongest through where our clients were integrated with a partner platform. So, again, kind of nurturing those channel partnerships. Did we grow revenue? No, but we grew the number of clients that were connected to one of our channel partners. And I think really, Paul, you know, one thing, the first, I guess you asked for three. One is the channel program we built. The most important thing to us is the relationship. Making sure they have a good experience. You know, we have the right ecosystem. We have the right equation of partner relationship managers to partners, that we have the right people in the right places here at Verified First to support them, that we're responsive. I don't recall a time that a partner has ever called us and took more than 30 seconds to get on the phone. So, you know, that one is that relationship that matters most, I think. And like you say, the Jim Collins piece, right people on the bus, wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seat. Yeah, exactly. And so that's important. You know, that's definitely a critical part of our partner platform. I think the other thing, you know, nurturing channel partnerships comes to, you know, that experience is born out of that relationship, but also out of technology. You know, we've embedded technology to make sure that the communication channel is open, bidirectional, that not only are we receiving leads from partners, we're sending them leads or deals, you know, to make sure there's full transparency. Technology enables us to do that, right? Absolutely. You know, that's really important as we nurture channel partners, to make sure there's full transparency. And the process, right, that there's no secret, hidden objectives or goals. And it's really interesting, Paul, because in my dissertation research, that's one topic that came up in the research is sometimes the transparency is lacking. And then, you know, people are in it for different financial gains, and those financial gains matter more than everything else. For us, a verified first, you know, that's not the most important necessarily. It's really a blend of making sure that that relationship experience are good. And then number three, I think, you know, for. Nurturing partners, I think you really have to come down to making sure that they understand what's in it for them, you know, and what's in it, you know, to be a true partner. It's not. We're not a partner by paper, right? We're going to go do things together. We're going to take action together. We're going to build a plan together. And so all of that goes into us at Verified First successfully nurturing our partners. I'll give you that mind share with the partner when they know that you are considering the priorities of their business. And vice versa, this is something I did early on in my career was to travel, visit a bunch of channel partners for a technology company where I was managing the channel out of New Jersey. And first thing that I would try to do is establish, you know, where's your business going, what's key and try to have that alignment to be more of a true partner, just like you were saying. So those are three really valuable best practices. Yeah, I think it's interesting, Paul, you know, you think about the whole idea of partnership. partner programs and I'm I mean, there's a ton of organizations I've been, you know, associated with or seen, right? That, you know, as they think about their partner programs, it's like, oh, we got this logo that we can put up on our website. Therefore, you don't see my air quotes. Therefore, we're partners. The reality is, is true partners, you know, I think it's kind of like a marriage. You know, I've been married for 25 years almost. And, you know, it's my wife and I, we roll up our sleeves. We have our differences. We have our things we like to do together. And we have our goals. And we set very solid goals together. And I think in a partnership in business as well, at least my experience in the B2B market, if you're not committed like a marriage, it's probably not a good partnership, quite frankly. And I think those three items I just shared are probably ways to make your partnership marriage strong. That's great advice. Great advice, Ben. Now, why is it so important? I mean, we talk about, you know, if you look at your channel and you've got, you know, different partners at different. Stages of their maturity level, right? We typically see the 80-20 rule applying to channel programs where you have 20% of your partners generating 80% of your business. So why is it important to kind of nurture all of those channel partners, you know, right from the start? You know, it's a true statement. 80-20 is a rule that stands in the partner world as well. At least that's been my experience. But I'll tell you that some of the biggest deals I've seen come through across my career, right? Not just to verify. First are with partners that we kept a relationship going and all of a sudden, sure, they didn't send us, you know, over a period of a year, you know, 100 deals and those 100 deals add up to X dollars each. We get that one relationship that we kept going and we kept warm and we've nurtured it and we've taken care of the partner to where they're comfortable. All of a sudden, they realize that they can trust us. And, you know, then they turn on the fire and they submit us a deal that's, you know, a million dollars or a million and a half. And, you know, all of a sudden. It makes a lot of difference, you know, to get them to submit us those kind of deals because a lot of partners, at least in my experience, are somewhat hesitant to do that. It's easy to send the smaller deals over the bigger deals. It's harder because you're like still building that trust. You're not sure if it's going to be transparent. So that whole nurture process, even if it took us a year or two years, sometimes it's worth it. You know, it's that one deal that makes a difference. Oh, absolutely. Completely. Absolutely. And if you could give some advice to people that are struggling to. Keep partners engaged and things like, you know, just capturing their attention. You talk about the communication and you, you know, getting somebody on the phone within 30 seconds if they're, you know, requiring or needing something from verified first. But when it comes to that partner engagement over the long haul, so you can build those relationships and, you know, eventually, you know, start seeing those those larger opportunities. Do you have any suggestions, recommendations, things that you could share? Yeah, I think, you know, I think we're pretty proactive at verified first. And we have been at other companies, or at least the team I've been around has been, you know, making sure that it's clear who owns a book of business. It's clear who who manages that book of business. They have clear relationships. They're reaching out frequently. But I think from a from a marketing end, you know, at the end of the day, I'm a marketing person, right? That's where my mind's at is we use a lot of pretty intriguing automation and gamification to really keep our people engaged with content. You know, currently, we've got a really, really strong. Strong automation process that connects with our partner portal to Salesforce. And then we use part out as our marketing automation tool to trigger all kinds of notification based on last time we saw our partner in our partner portal. Last time they registered a deal. The last time maybe their partner manager changed. And we want to make sure they know that new content that came in when they see it, how often they see it. And then every time that they haven't been engaged very often, we try to try behavior by offering different gamification value. So point system where they can get gift. Cards for a number of different activities they want to do or things they want to buy. And Paul, that seems to work really well, I think. But automation is only part of the equation. Really, I think the magic happens on our partner relationship manager team picking up the phone, making the phone calls. You know, you mentioned a little bit earlier, you know, you used to travel and visit partner and get FaceTime. We can't do that today. No, we can't. We're locked down in this world where we're all virtual. And I think there's a couple of pros and cons of that, you know. But the pros. The pros have been we got to know our partners a little bit better. We're seeing their kids and we see that they have a dog in the background. And we take note of those things. Our team at Verified First does a really good job of taking note of those things. All of a sudden, you get a bark box delivered to your door. Or we take note that you love cooking or in the conversation. All of a sudden, you get a hello, fresh gift box. So there's different things we can do to drive engagement. But at the end of the day, I think it's kind of a blend of everything coming together in a really well-rounded team working well. That's awesome. If you see a dog in the background, I have seen more dogs on Zoom and go to meeting calls. In fact, I was just on the phone with somebody yesterday where I think the first 10 minutes of our conversation revolved around his new beagle. And the beagle got up on his lap. And I think he got the most attention. He was kind of the center of the world for a few minutes. It was great. But I love that, that you are being so proactive and, you know, timely in communicating with your partners to really build the relationship. So what about things like training? I mean, you're a SaaS solution. You're offering these background checks. I'm sure that there is a little bit of ramp up time for your partners. Does the training and kind of educating people through content, does that play a big role in your strategy on how to nurture your channel? Yeah, I think there's definitely a play there. I don't know if I would call it a big play. And I only say that because most, most of our training is verified first, at least, you know, nearly all of our training is about the sales opportunity and when to bring up the conversation about our integration. And so we, we do use sales training quite often, not only, you know, face-to-face zoom meetings or go to webinar or whatever the training method is. But also, you know, we do have different training mechanisms to help them understand, you know, how to, how to submit a deal to us and things that we've automated. Um, but I can, to say it's a big factor in that relationship. I don't think it's huge, um, back at count that was different, right? It count we're co-selling together. So as co-sellers, we were really wanted people to understand, you know, the value of count and why, you know, we can reduce fraud and increase sales because we can, we can eliminate, uh, through our technology account, through the technology that was developed, you know, our, our payment process to leverage, uh, a way to open up the sales funnel as big as they can without being hit with the fraud risk. And, uh, a lot of, you know, chargeback providers, right? They offer an insurance, Paul. And so that insurance, basically you get charged back you're, you're all of a sudden, um, just paying premium and it, they block the transaction. The reality is there's a high false positive rate. And so just blocking chargebacks, isn't the solution to get you the most sales. So we found the secret sauce in there and, you know, being able to educate our partner, our partners at count on why that matters. It's good for them because our payment processors, they let more transactions through, they make more revenue. And it's good for us because every time we would stop fraud, it's a win, you know, for sure. The reality is there's a balance of a percentage that you have to be a little bit willing to take risks in that space. Um, but overall, you know, I think that verified first, you know, training's a part, but I, again, I don't think it's a huge part of our success today. Anyway, I, I think it's probably, it's probably something we'll develop over the next year. So it, it really does sound like you've got, you know, a great strategy around communication with partners, driving engagement. You know, at the start of today's show, we talked about the cost of generating new partners versus the ones of, you know, keeping previous partners and just engaging with them from your experience. When is it time very much like that marriage to call an end to the partnership? So, you know, the, the partner is no longer engaged or, you know, this isn't a two-way street anymore. What do you do when, you know, the nurturing efforts don't work out and it's, uh, it's time to part ways. Yeah, that's a good question. That's a tough question for me, Polly. I'm a, I'm an overly optimistic optimist. So, you know, for me, I don't want to ever give up, you know, but, um, you know, there are times where we have partners. I mean, right now we're going through an experience with one of our partners on one of our, our webinar events that we're co-promoting together. You know, when the, when you having a problem with, you know, a broken link or something's not working or the email didn't perform the way it should have that they promised to send, you know, and, and they just go dark, right. They, they black out, they never respond. They don't pick up the phone. You know, then you start to raise those red flags, um, and say, okay, let's try to get someone in and nurture that relationship a little bit more carefully. You know, um, when you see that over and over and over, you tend to start to rely on partners that do respond because at the end of the day, we're trying to, we're trying to grow revenue we're trying to increase profitability and the valuation of our company. And if we're just spending our time spinning these wheels on people that don't respond or quite frankly, don't care, you know, uh, why bother? Yeah. Yeah. You kind of have to have a time where the partner relationship manager has to make that call that it's not effective for their time. And, you know, we, we actually go through a process to, um, let our partners know that things aren't working and that, you know, we kind of give them a chance to, re-engage, if you will, and, you know, if that goes out you know if they don't re-engage over time we'll send them a kind of cancellation partnership agreement but you know that's where it's different than marriage at least my opinion marriage you're married and you're committed absolutely you know i i know there's reasons for out but i don't ever see a reason for out you know i i think that it's a two-way street you know and sure maybe if you have someone that's not willing to work um maybe that's your signal that it's not working but i tend to think there's usually always a way it's something that's not understood somewhere or miscommunication somewhere and so that's why my overly optimistic optimism says to always keep going always keep going but no bark box for the uh for the partner that that isn't engaged yeah yeah there you go so you know if we look at the proper methods that you've seen for kind of how to nurture these partnerships and get them to translate it into higher sales what do you think the impact can have on an organization's growth if they really take these uh these tips that that you shared with us today uh any idea of you know what kind of impact that that can make well i know for verified first you know i can't share too much of the exact details and numbers but i can tell you you know as we've nurtured our partners i think we just let one of our partners go the first time in a year and a half so a our partners stick around and you know that means that they're somewhat engaged and uh we haven't had to go through that process a ton so that helps but that also increases sales because that partner's here and they're still doing you know one of our requirements is we get so many leads every quarter um or deals submitted on our portal you know and that generates higher sales our deal conversion rates coming through our partner portal paul are somewhere north of 50 percent which is really strong really healthy that's a very very strong number yeah um it's kind of interesting i had a conversation with one of my colleagues yesterday he's like well i think that number should be around 80 so let's go audit who didn't convert and understand that we're handling him right because he thinks we're better than we are which we're pretty good as a sales and marketing organization we're really good actually but you know that conversion is really interesting so every deal i can get come through translates to higher sales and when you think about the the growth of our business i i don't know the exact number but somewhere around 60 percent of the deals that we get at verified first or the the opportunities that are created come through our channel program when i started verified first you know two and a half years ago that percentage was like 30 so we've really grown the value of our channel partner program and then when covet hit we found that those those those clients stuck you know they stayed with us for longer and we didn't have so much turn it's really interesting because then our whole organization now set a goal for clients not using one of our partners it's time to put them in front of our partners and help them use us through one of those those those partner platforms oh that those are amazing results yeah nurtures everything now those that is some remarkable results in in a really short time not to mention with covid it kind of impacted the economy quite a bit and you know there was a lot of businesses that that did well especially in the tech sector but there's a lot of service businesses that that really hurt so i can imagine as a as a hiring tool to perform those uh those background checks and and other other things that you know you were strong through this this tough period that's uh that's that's quite something yeah i think it would be unfair to say there wasn't a dip right uh you know the the fact is our business outside of our partner ecosystem quite a bit but because we had such a robust partner platform uh program and you know a lot of our clients were connected to those ecosystems already you know there's a lot of investment that goes into having an applicant tracking system or hcm or hris and i think that what we get out of that is you know because client you know the employers are invested in a platform they typically you know while hiring dipped in some areas like you said paul hiring actually increased than others absolutely you know you think about healthcare alone i mean we're interviewing i get to interview the head of prestige care which is the west coast i should say pacific northwest if you will the us they're in assisted living skilled nursing facilities they're in nursing facilities they're in nursing facilities facility program and it's really interesting because like i'm surprised i get him on the phone to have an interview because he's you know he's going through massive hiring and massive scales to keep up with the turn that's happening in the healthcare industry so while sure it went down it we rebounded fairly well pretty quick and uh still had a growth year in 2020 so it's pretty amazing just a great team and great leaders at verify first oh that is that is really great so if somebody wants to learn more about verified first and and what you offer or uh they'd be interested in in learning more about uh about your channel program um how can they get in touch uh you know the easiest is always to give us a call uh our number is on our website at verifiedfirst.com um or you can give us a call at 888-670-9564 of course that's us so 1-88-670-9564 or just hit our website so um yeah uh you always can email marketing at verifiedfirst.com you can call paul and he'll call me i mean we're connected pretty well paul so i think uh you'd be able to get a hold of us absolutely everything but smoke signals uh too much time inside can't see them anymore so but any any final thoughts any uh suggestions that uh that you would recommend when it comes to you know driving that nurture strategy within your partner strategy no i think it's just be authentic you know everything that i've mentioned if there's no i really care and i'm authentic it's kind of wasted time i i think that our our partner relationship managers have super deep really strong relationships with all of our partners um and they really are people that are genuinely you know genuinely care about not only that success personally but in their life as whole and you know this this world today of kobe has gotten us to know our partners better and you know sure we don't go out and have dinner and play golf and do those things we all love to do as often but nonetheless i think it's allowed us to connect deeper and those deep connections are all the success when it comes to nurture well i'm looking for this uh whole pandemic to end uh i'd like to be able to get out to uh boise uh play around a golf with you and maybe have uh have a dinner and a few few drinks yeah well i hit around the golf yesterday paul so i'm getting ready for you all right well the snow has just gone away here in uh in the lovely city of toronto and i did dust my clubs off and put them in the car over the weekend so i'm looking forward to finally getting out and having that little white ball disturb a perfectly uh wonderful walk yeah there you go that's that's golf for you right absolutely well thanks so much for coming to the show ben it's been a pleasure talking with you thanks paul all right guys thank you for listening to the ultimate channel sales podcast and please don't forget to join us next time where we'll have steve kazan on the show to discuss the four best practices to lay the foundation for a successful channel program and for more information please visit us at channelsalespodcast.com if you haven't already 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