What is the benefit of partner training and having partners get certified?

I view training and certification separately. Partner training and enablement is a critical step in the process of developing buy-in to the partnership across your partner's organisation. Training sessions solve the first two steps of the Educate > Enable > Motivate framework for developing great partnerships. I haven't gotten to the stage where my current org is certifying partners. It can often be a vanity exercise - imo, it's useful for the following three things: 1. Showing which (if any) individuals at your partner organisation are seriously interested in the partnership 2. Giving your partners a project for you to work towards together, building collaborative momentum 3. (The most difficult thing to get right) Certified partner training can provide an in-depth technical understanding of your product for resellers and channel partners to use your solution to provide additional services

To me, the most important part of getting partners certified is helping validate which partners a customer should choose from when looking to hire a service partner. As a partner team, you are building the necessary training and technical certification tracks that should, in theory, help filter through the potential options for your customers. If your training/certification materials are not doing this effectively, it may be worth exploring new tracks you can implement to ensure the right partners are recommended to customers.

If you form strong partnerships with the right companies/teams, you can get to a setup where your partners act as extended ears/eyes in the market. If you train/certify correctly, then they understand what value your product/service can bring and to what type of customers so that any of their reps from AMs to SDRs can act as an additional intel source for your team. Rather than just relying on your direct outreach, marketing and sales team, partners can exponentially extend your reach and qualify effectively. They would be motivated to introduce or let you know of opps for your organisation through referral kickbacks but more importantly, general partner collaboration as hopefully you are doing the same for them in return.

I cannot stress enough the importance of partner training. It is impossible for a partner to support with referrals or any initiative at all if they do not know what you do. You have to ensure you are providing adequate training to your partners in different forms. Everyone learns differently and we want to ensure we are enabling all the right people at their company. Which means different types of digestible enablement materials. Not only do you need to provide training to partners on your offering but you need to also share insights on your “better together story”. The reason being, when your partner sets out to make introductions on your behalf, they will likely be faced with many questions and in some cases some objections. They need to be equipped to handle these types of things when they come up. This will help to ensure we are showcasing the value of our partnership to our customers and prospects.

I love this question, because I get to share what I think is one of the most valuable things I learned from being on the receiving end of many lunch and learns or partner enablement sessions: Your partner will NEVER sell you if they do not know what you do, or how it benefits their client. Think about this one, deeply - when your partner is pitching your product to one of their customers, they will likely face some questions from their customer, including but (definitely) not limited to: Why do I need this? How much does it cost? How will it benefit my business? Why is this better than what I have in place? How long will this take to implement? Will I have to shut down critical business practices to enable this? How will my team have to manage this? If your partner cannot stand up to questioning about your product, THEY WILL NOT PITCH IT. They won't stake their reputation, especially when you think about who is pitching, which is usually not your partner manager! So with all of that context... 1. Partner training trains the right people on the right questions about your product, and 2. Partner certification enhances the legitimacy of their pitch to their customers. The other benefits of certification are covered in the question "What's the most effective way to scale partner adoption beyond the first few partner engagements that happen?"

For our solutions (consulting) partners, we provide free training and certifications, and they can obtain the Silver tier and be listed in our directory only after obtaining at least one certification. For them, having the benefit of a Silver partner logo and being able to claim that expertise in front of customers is enough value to get certified. And when they have been using Caspio for a while, the certification itself isn't too difficult to obtain.