We talk a lot in this industry about Voice of the Customer and Voice of the Employee. But what about the Voice of the Partner?
The success of many organizations relies on the trefoil of customers, employees and partners. This is especially true for companies where the third-party sales channel is an essential and built-in element of their business model. Yet listening to these valued partners and making ongoing, positive changes to improve the relationship with them is an afterthought for far too many companies.
Companies steeped in listening to their customers and employees too often dismiss extending the same opportunity to their partners and resellers as unnecessary, a luxury, or even a dangerous gesture that may send to partners the wrong message about the power distribution in the relationship.
Over the years, when discussing partner voice opportunities with clients, I have heard many versions of these themes:
- Our partners work closely with us. We don’t need a separate listening program for them. If they want to tell us something, they will.
- Our channel is spread all over the globe, and some of these people don’t even do business in the same language as our company. Listening to them is just too much trouble.
- We’re in charge here! If our resellers don’t like doing business with us, well, too bad!
In other words: Fly our flag, carry the awesome responsibility of pleasing our customers, follow our rules and meet our sales quotas, but be quiet and know your place. That’s no way to treat a business partner!
Partners have a unique perspective on your organization, seeing things not as a direct employee or a customer, but as a special third-party to your organization, aligned with your company, products and services in a unique way.
- Give your partners a way to communicate their ideas, compliments and grievances with you in a way that doesn’t put them on the spot. As is the case with customers and employees, best practices suggest using solicited feedback in the form of regular relationship measurement and key touch-point transactional surveys combined with an unsolicited feedback option, such as an electronic “comment box” tool.
- You brought your partners into the fold for a reason, often to extend the reach of your company’s sales team into geographies or verticals you alone could not master directly in a cost-effective fashion. Leverage the diversity of your channel to learn more about parts of your marketplace where your partner has special expertise or knowledge.
- Show your commitment to your channel by listening to them and making improvements based on their feedback. Uncover ways to maximize their performance and find out what drives their engagement with your company. Identify what makes a strong business partner to optimize the performance of your indirect sales force.
You’ve taken the steps to listen to your customers and your employees. Now it’s time to bring your partners’ voice into your corporate feedback initiative.
Sarah Simon is Enterprise Program Manager for Allegiance, Inc.
