How do you know if your partner enablement strategy is successful?

A successful partner enablement strategy drives engagement, knowledge retention, and revenue growth. Key indicators include high activation rates, training and certification completion, and active use of partner resources. Partners should close their first deal within 60-90 days, with increasing deal volume and revenue contribution over time. Strong engagement in portal logins, sales enablement materials, and co-marketing efforts signals effectiveness. Additionally, high partner satisfaction (NPS) and retention rates indicate long-term success. If partners struggle to close deals or remain inactive, refine training, support, and incentives. Regular tracking and feedback ensure continuous improvement.

Assessing the effectiveness of your partner enablement strategy is essential to ensure that your partners can successfully sell and support your product, while also achieving shared growth and success. 1. Partner engagement and activity: high attendance rates at training sessions and certification programs indicate that partners are invested in learning and improving their skills. Regular engagement with enablement resources shows that partners see value in the materials you’re providing. 2. Increased sales/revenue: one of the most direct indicators of success is the increase in sales generated through your partners. If partners are closing/helping you close more deals or driving you higher-value opportunities, it's a sign your enablement strategy is working. 3. Partner satisfaction: gathering regular feedback from your partners is crucial. If partners are satisfied with the training, support, and resources provided, it’s a good sign that your enablement strategy is on track. 4. Retention of priority partners: if top performing partners remain loyal and engaged, it's an indication that your enablement efforts are strong. 6. Higher conversion rates from leads: if partners are continuously driving ICP opportunities that convert at a high rate, it indicates they're effectively leveraging the sales enablement tools you’ve provided. 7. Successful collaborations: smooth client onboarding and adoption suggest your enablement program is effectively preparing partners to handle these phases. By tracking these key performance indicators (KPIs) and continually gathering feedback from your partners, you can assess whether your partner enablement strategy is successful.

Some leading indicators here might be: are you seeing more requests for partner intros? An uptick in engagement with partner content in your LMS? An uptick in mentions of key partners in your call recording software? Ultimately though, improved partner enablement is going to show up downstream, in metrics like partner influenced revenue (new and existing business), partner-assisted retention, and improved activation & maturity rates through higher integration install rates.

Depends on what you are enabling your partners to do. If its leads and sales, then... you should be seeing leads and sales. Some subtle indicators that your enablement program can be improved: - Leads are not closing at a rate equal or better to your organic leads. - Customer churn is outsized on your partner led customer base. - Leads start and diminish to zero over time. - Customer support cases are outsized on your partner led customers.

- My colleagues are asking the right discovery questions in their customer and prospect calls. - They are initially bringing me into some customer calls to help with discovery but then afterwards are able to run that process by themselves. - The number of introductions, intel or efforts we as an organisation provide to partners (and the other way around). - Number and success of marketing activities that take place with partners. - Tracking % of partner influence on new revenue but also existing reoccurring revenue. The best is when you see the momentum increase and you as a partner manager become less of a bottleneck.

Any strategy should have measurable, time-bound outcomes determined prior to a project. Success is achieving what you set out to achieve! When building a partner enablement strategy, first identify your goals. Do you want to publish one co-authored content piece a month? Are you interested in signing up 10 partners for a partner program? Would you like to achieve 1 lead per partner per month? Once defined, set a timeframe in which you expect to achieve results and identify the resources you'll need (marketing, sales, CS) outside of your team to accomplish what you're looking for. If you're not tracking to those goals, identify if there are resource gaps constraining your success, or if there is a different roadblock in your path.

If you want to know if your partner enablement strategy is successful, here are a few things to look out for: 1. Are your partners actively promoting your products and services? 2. Do they seem knowledgeable about your offerings? 3. Are they providing positive feedback about your products and services? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you may need to revisit your partner enablement strategy. Try focusing on training and tools that will help partners better understand your products and how they can be best used to generate leads and close sales. You may also want to consider incentives or rewards to encourage partner engagement and success.

Eventually the true North Star metric is partner-sourced and influenced revenue. But towards that, we have other enablement indicators such as how many certifications partners are obtaining, how many deals they're registering with us and the pipeline value, etc. The actual revenue that partners themselves are deriving is not always possible to ascertain, but in lieu of that, when we see our partners hiring for more Caspio developers on their rolls, and when we hear positive feedback from them on how they were able to win deals or execute projects faster or cheaper with Caspio, that's great anecdotal evidence as well!