A reseller is a type of business partner that—as part of a program—will take your existing products or services and include them within their own sales process.
The primary goal of a reseller partner program is to increase the reach of your sales network by tapping into previously hard-to-reach parts of your target market.
But how do you ensure that a partner talks about your product or service in the right way, add that they don’t water down the messaging behind it to sell more quickly?
When designing a partner program for resellers, it's important to ensure it considers accountability, alignment on sales efforts, and partner/business benefits.
Who Is a Reselling Partner?
A reselling partner is a business that sells your products or services, marked with your brand, either under an “augmented” package, which includes their services on top, or on a standalone basis with added support or responsibilities highlighted in their program.
Resellers might sell various products, including software solutions and devices, to address customer needs related to network management and transformation.
The primary commitment of a reselling partner is to pitch your product to their existing audience in a way that’s relevant and consistent with your messaging, at any time they can.
The sales process is essential for most companies because it sets a customer's expectations upon purchase. When those expectations aren’t met, customers will stop using and purchasing the product in 90 %+ of cases, sometimes with negative word-of-mouth involved.
A reseller needs to take some of that expectation-setting workload off their internal sales team and turn it into a value-added experience for potential customers.
Example: You’ve developed a web-based software suite and want to expand the reach of your sales efforts through reseller partnerships. The ideal solution for both parties is for the reseller to add additional services on top of your offering to: 1) lighten the load on your support team, and 2) provide additional margin on the reseller’s end. It’s a win-win scenario.
Reseller Partner Program: All You Need To Know
To create an effective program that fits both the needs of the reseller and your needs as a business, you need to come up with a strong business plan and back it up with proper deal registration and management practices. Integrating the program into your daily operations and systems will ensure its success and sustainability. Although a partner program will save you time in the long term, it will take effort and patience to get things to that point.
How Do You Create a Reseller Program?
There are 3 foundational elements you must consider before implementing a reseller program: 1) your long-term business objectives; 2) your ideal partners’ objectives, and; 3) how points #1 and #2 come together to serve your ideal customer.
A partnership isn’t about taking advantage of someone else’s network to gain all the benefits and leave the reseller dried out of resources; it’s the exact opposite.
Provide your partners with the right assets to keep them engaged
The common goal in a partnership is to elevate one another in ways that would be impossible to achieve on your own. This means providing training, giving out regular benefits, and creating a community around selling your products.
Partner Relationship Management (PRM) software like Kiflo helps alleviate some training and alignment workload by providing a consistent partner experience. Embracing advanced technology and enhancing connectivity can improve the management of your reseller program, ensuring better performance and scalability.
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The 7-Step Reseller Program Framework
Although your ideal reseller will be different from another business, depending on what you sell, there are 7 clear steps you can take as a general “framework” around building a successful program. Here’s how the process works:
- Understand your business objectives and assign them a set timeline for the year. Then, review that timeline based on the cycle you’ve chosen (monthly, quarterly, bi-quarterly, …). Without this first step taken care of, nothing else will make sense in delivering value to your business.
- Start building relationships with potential reseller partners manually and ask for feedback on a program's design. It’s not smart to put all your resources into one basket if you don’t know exactly what partners want and how you can provide it to them.
- Make it clear what partners can and cannot do when pitching your product or service. Use the experience of your internal sales team to create sound business plans and guidelines for your partners.
- Start drafting all the reseller program documentation, including business plans, benefits, partner onboarding processes, and deal registration procedures.
- Have a few select “early bird” reseller partners undergo the onboarding and activation process to provide further feedback. If necessary, tweak the questions asked and materials provided during the process.
- Integrate the idea of creating regular (and relevant) content into the reseller program to keep your partners engaged. Let them know what’s coming up and how that benefits them and their prospects.
- Bring these elements together in a PRM software like Kiflo to manage your partner relationships and never lose sight of a deal.
These points must be flexible depending on your business model; however, as general guidance, they can help you move faster towards launching your partner program.
You shouldn’t be afraid to iterate here. Testing and learning are key to developing an efficient (and practical!) partner program for your business.
3 Examples of B2B Reseller Partner Programs
To help you visualize what a reseller partner program looks like (often referred to as a “solutions” program), here are 3 examples from large businesses:
Reseller Program #1: The Solutions Partner Program from HubSpot
One of the most successful programs in B2B tech startup history, HubSpot’s Solutions Partner Program is a great example of how integrating resellers within the product made it easier for them to understand what they were selling.
These programs target diverse business markets, including small to medium-sized businesses and departmental workgroups within larger organizations. Additionally, the program supports the seamless management and connectivity of IoT devices, which is crucial for integrating legacy devices with modern networks and driving efficiency and profitability through advanced connectivity solutions.
Of course, HubSpot is uniquely positioned to offer a CRM tool specifically to their customers, making it easy for partners to embrace HubSpot’s culture and even enabling entire companies that revolve around the Solutions Program.
That is how powerful the program is.
A few things that make the program effective:
- The product is outstanding and gets better week in, week out.
- HubSpot provides continuous partner training through “Academy” videos and early access to new features.
- The lead registration process is effortless, and HubSpot has a dedicated team that ensures all deals are carried out fairly.
- HubSpot offers clear “tiers” as part of their program (PDF), making it easy to understand what you get as a partner.
These elements combined make entering HubSpot’s world as a reseller worth it. Just jumping from the basic “Provider” tier to the “Partner” tier gets you 20% commissions for the entire lifetime of a subscription. Considering their prices, that’s nothing to sneeze at.
Resellers then mark up HubSpot's offerings with their own consulting services, making it an incredibly profitable deal on both ends: HubSpot gets an indirect salesforce spread across multiple countries, whereas the resellers pitch an amazing product that they can profit from while delivering premium business consulting services.
Reseller Program #2: Microsoft's Solution Providers Program
Similar to HubSpot’s reseller program, Microsoft’s solutions partner network is much older and much larger. It started in 1992 and expanded to include all the latest Microsoft technologies.
Although the program isn’t nearly as “intuitive” as HubSpot’s, it achieved success through a strong effort from internal Microsoft representatives pushing their offerings outward and into organizations that would strongly benefit from reselling tech like Azure or Office 365.
Microsoft’s program is powerful because of its extensive ramifications in the corporate world. So, to draw inspiration from their success, it’s important to understand that the alignment of your internal sales team is crucial to increasing the performance of your indirect sales team.
What makes the program powerful is that Microsoft's internal sales team is aware of the importance of letting partners “do their thing” while providing them with extensive first-hand training on new Microsoft apps. Alignment plus training equals great partner relationships.
Reseller Program #3: Asana's "Channel" Partner Program
The channel partner program from Asana is interesting because it provides a clear “pathway” for using certain partner services to unlock Asana's capabilities on a large business scale.
It’s a refreshing approach that allows the prospect to understand what they’re getting out of the $X they pay monthly to use the partner’s services.
This gives both the end-user and the reselling partner the confidence to know that expectations are aligned and that there will be no guesswork during the sales process.
If the prospect isn’t aware of the pathway, a partner can always redirect them to the appropriate resource and enhance the sales experience through Asana’s content efforts.
To start your own program, take inspiration from bigger companies and implement what they do well that would work for your company as well.
You’re not copying or “stealing” anything; just learning from those who did it before and avoiding any major mistakes.
Resellers Help Your Business Move (a Lot) Faster
Turning a reseller partner program into a profit machine isn’t an overnight process; it takes years of time and effort. But when you do pull it off, the benefits are immense, and they stay for the long term.
To build a profitable program, it’s crucial to be able to analyze the effectiveness of certain partner tiers and the profits made on specific deals over time.
Deal management is another area where PRM tools like Kiflo give you additional value, as it allows you to report on deal progression over a set timeline, including the impact of advanced voice and data services, making it possible to say:
"Yes, we've reached our quarterly business objectives!"
Without integrated reporting capabilities, you’re left to wrangle spreadsheets together, spending days or even weeks trying to gain a complete picture of your partners’ work.
That’s why it’s so important to have an all-in-one system that can immediately take a deal’s information and compare it against your business objectives on a chart.
That’s what Kiflo does, and it’ll help you turn a “Eh, maybe it’s working” partner program into a “We know with 99% confidence that the reseller program is landing us 3x the profits on a quarterly basis, with this specific channel performing the best” partner program.
