Partner Content: Talk the talk - Why communication is key to building a successful partner program

A good channel partner program is essential to engaging and motivating partners to deliver value to customers. A good channel partner will be an advocate for your business, pitching with enthusiasm to potential customers on your behalf.

However, having a good product is no longer enough. Having a value proposition that includes financial incentives, training, resources, marketing, and support is essential to standing out from the crowd and getting the most from your channel partners.

According to recent research by CRN, continued investment in the partner program was the factor that MSPs value most in their vendors. This was followed by better margins than other vendors and face-to-face support.

Pablo Onnias, Senior Director of Channel Programs, Enablement and GTMs at Akamai, said that communicating well with channel partners is essential to success:

"Ensuring we have touch points with our partners regularly is important, monthly or quarterly. It's about listening to their needs, current challenges in the market, and what we can do to help them overcome those challenges."

The channel has undergone a number of changes in recent years, with a flurry of M&A activity, the MSP and hosting business model overtaking the VAR business model, and many partners expanding to offer multiple kinds of services.

Onnias said this change is reflected in how Akamai approaches the channel:

"In Akamai, we had a channel strategy revolving around resellers and VARS, which remains a big portion of our focus. With close interaction with our partners, we started to embrace other motions. Distributors, as well as GSIs, have become an important part of our motion. Seventy percent of our new security business is going through resellers and VARS. We're looking at roughly 25% going through distribution and the remaining 5% going through global system integrators."

He also noted the rise in distributors, which resell products and services to solution providers and GSIs that drive transformational projects:

"What's important is that if I look at the data year-on-year, specifically comparing H1 of 2023 and H1 of 2024, distribution and GSIs have grown 56% and 34% from a new customer units perspective. With ongoing feedback loops, we will keep supporting and enhancing these motions."

When it comes to working with a vendor, channel partners have a number of considerations. They want predictable pricing, alignment on goals, a clear idea of the margins they can expect, the level of support they will receive, and what services they can deliver, all of which contribute to the partner's bottom line.

This is especially key as new offers from vendors enter the market. Rather than selling a product, communicating the benefits of a service to a customer can be more complex, meaning service providers may need a greater level of technical support.

Having a partner program that clearly sets out how partners can advance their expertise, add value, increase profitability, and unlock new revenue streams is key.

Onnias said vendors need to communicate how the product fits within the wider tech stack:

"Akamai has made an effort to ensure that we give all the support that partners need to successfully position, sell, integrate, and support our product. The partner program brings in itself rich financial benefits as well. If you consider the rebates, the MDF program, the upfront discounts that we provide, and also some of the individual-level targeted benefits, I think that makes a compelling argument for the product plus program."

He said there has been a particular focus on managed services and how partners can build recurring revenue:

"Managing the end-to-end customer experience from integration, servicing, and support allows partners to generate significant additional revenue on top of the product margin. Our program is evolving to provide further benefits and ensure that partners take full advantage of our enablement and certification program."

Onnias shared that Akamai is currently revamping its partner program, and that the partners themselves have played a key role in this:

"We're currently working on revamping our entire partner program, and we've gone through the first round of design. It entailed interviews with our partners where they had an opportunity to be part of the design, react, and be included in the journey. This is a true partnership, in my view. It's not us designing something and saying, ‘Hey, this is our partner program'. Based on the initial feedback, we're currently going through a second phase."

For today's channel partners, it is not a case of one size fits all, with a range of primary and secondary business models, a blend of product and services revenue, and varying experiences depending on region and the size of the organisation. In order to empower partners, vendors must tap into their unique strengths as well as tailoring partner programs and incentives to best meet their needs.

"The core principles are flexibility and adaptability," said Onnias. "Today, it's challenging to categorise our partners into a single type. We're developing a partner program that accounts for the diverse approaches not just across different partners but even within a single partner's operations. We're creating a modular framework for this program, allowing for stackable incentives based on the level of engagement throughout the entire customer lifecycle."

He again emphasised the importance of communication with channel partners throughout the process:

"In the past few years, we've made significant strides in being more inclusive with our partners. We've fostered strong engagement and momentum by opening our internal product and industry calls to them. This shift underscores how Akamai has increasingly embraced a channel-first—and in some cases, channel-only—approach for some of our recently acquired products."

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This article is sponsored by Akamai