Partner Relationship Management is it a Necessity?

Having services that operate in isolation and that do not share with the rest of your company will usually cause visibility problems. You may also find that you lack collaboration between all of your teams as well. It may be that it hinders your partner management, and this can make it hard to achieve your full potential.

What is CRM and PRM?

Over the next 10 years or so, it would seem that PRM or Partner Relationship Management is often integrated with CRM or Customer Relationship Management. This is especially the case when it comes to software, as this will ultimately make a huge difference to the overall growth of your indirect sales. PRM software is now just as essential as your CRM software, and it could mean the difference between success and failure for your brand. If you want to try and make a positive change here, then the only thing that you need to do is take a look below.

Are CRM and PRM Essential for SaaS Start-ups?

SaaS start-ups will get the biggest benefit from building relationships with other companies. This is especially the case when you look at the industry as a whole. The relationships could range from being strategical alliances to channel partnerships and even co-branding as well.

How Do Marketers Use Partner Relationship Management To Their Advantage?

Healthy partnerships, whether they happen to be big or small, can easily be essential to your start-up’s marketing efforts. They could also add a lot of value to your company and to your partners as well. If you want to curate a mutually beneficial partnership, then you need to make sure that it is both successful and sustainable. Companies have to make sure that they have a system of strategies so that they can maintain their relationships and so that they can also focus on implementing the right methodologies too. As a marketer, it’s more than possible for you to use partner relationship management to your advantage. This is especially the case when you look at the fact that only 35% of companies have effective development for their channel partners.

An Insight into PRM

Partner relationship management is ultimately a set of strategies that companies use to try and ensure a smooth business transaction. They do this with those who they partner with in terms of marketing, as well as those who are selling the actual products. At the end of the day, PRM can range from having a single approach to having multiple complex approaches that revolve around data management and sophisticated software overall. 61% of companies do not have any PRM tech in place and this needs to change going into the future.

What’s a Partner Program?

Partner programs come in a huge range of formats and they have various purposes too. It will depend on the type of business you run and your goals when it comes to partnering with other companies. In a lot of cases, partners will sell your service or your product for a commission. Another option would be if partners referred leads to you, in exchange for a commission. Some partnerships are more focused on the marketing aspect of things. Your company may choose to team up with another company so that webinars, content creation, guest blogging, and more are all mutually beneficial. Fast-growing companies that work in the industry of SaaS often embrace partner relationships as being a way to seek innovative opportunities so that they can gain a solid amount of traction in the workplace. Partner relationship management can also help your company to reach new customers, which will help you greatly if you want to scale properly or if you want to execute new marketing ideas that would otherwise not at all be available. it’s vital that you are selective when choosing your partners and that you only work with companies who have goals, values, and developments that reflect your own.

At the end of the day, effective PRM ultimately starts out with you building mutual trust. You have to make sure that you are collaborating with partners who have clear expectations and a lot of communication. It’s essential that you talk about how all of this is going to occur at the start of the relationship so that everyone is able to understand the goals and how everyone judges progress.

How to Set PRM Expectations

If you want to set the right PRM expectations then you have to make sure that you set out any expectations that you have in writing. You also need to try and establish target goals so that you can determine how to measure your own progress. You can also agree on any methods of communication too.

PRM Software

PRM is a very broad concept and it encompasses nearly every aspect of how you should ultimately be managing your relationship with your partners. If you have a partner program of good size or even complexity, then it probably needs to include PRM software as you won’t be getting the best result out of your process if you don’t. When you look at Forrester, you will soon see that the PRM software market is now surging more than ever before. There are over 23 vendors that are responsible for $350 million in software revenue, every single year. By the year 2023, this is expected to rocket to $679 million. If you count PRM service provision as well as PRM software, you will soon see that the market right now stands at $850 million and it’s expected to reach $1.65 billion by the end of 2023.

PRM is Becoming More Popular

There are a huge variety of partner types that are now emerging in the business ecosystem that we see right now. This is creating the need for much better tools and it is going to help everyone to facilitate a much higher level of partner relationship management too. At the end of the day, channel partners have to make sure that they get more visibility and they also need more data that will help them to make better choices too. This will help them to drive all of the right partnerships and data so that they can make much more productive and predictable choices.

More Efficient Workflows

Channel partner managers cannot rely on Excel sheets or even spreadsheets anymore. They need to have integrated and isolated platforms that help them to manage all of their relationships. Partner managers need solutions that help them to address business logic and what comes with indirect sales overall. This could involve having a PRM profile that matches everything, such as business contributors, resellers, influencers, and more. Ultimately, if you have a partner program then you need to make sure that you have a PRM solution because if you don’t, then it may be that you end up getting left behind.