Solve the Partner Catch-22 Problem

Did you know that 70 percent of all new corporate partnerships fail to drive revenue? This is because of the notorious “Partner Catch-22” problem: Neither partner wants to invest its own money and resources in developing joint partner solutions until the partner relationship has generated a pipeline of leads. Yet, building such a pipeline is traditionally impossible without first making the aforementioned investment.

Luckily, a Partner Enablement Video can offer an end to this vicious cycle in several important ways:

• Bring integration solutions to life for sales teams and clients, even when those solutions are still in the planning stages.
• Demonstrate key partner differentiators and benefits — cost-effectively.
• Start pre-selling offerings in as few as two to three weeks.

A video will demonstrate your partnership, its offerings and its benefits — even before the joint solution(s) has been created. What’s more, creating a video can decrease work for engineering and design teams and enhance innovation as many video concepts and designs are incorporated into the final specification.

One plus one equals more than two
It’s often difficult for one company’s clients to visualize how a new partnership will benefit them. After all, they’re used to using the current solution in one way — by itself.

By creating a video that demonstrates the benefits of nascent partner offerings, you can create an actionable vision that will generate enthusiasm among your sales team members and your clientele. Both gain an immediate understanding of the joint solution’s benefits and experience a deeper level of engagement.

Better yet, you can use video to customize your message. For example, you can produce separate versions of your video for different customer verticals so that customers can understand how the partnership applies specifically to them. You can even target a video to your own and your partner’s sales forces so that they have a true understanding of how to adapt their selling strategies.

A successful Partnership Enablement Video accomplishes several essential goals:

• Exhibits how the companies’ combined efforts will work
• Clearly demonstrates the solution’s benefit to viewers
• Clarifies the strengths and boundaries of the partnership
• Differentiates products and services
• Educates viewers about the other partner’s technology or reputation
• Increases brand awareness for both companies

Having this information upfront will save time and money.

Take the example of two tech companies that decide to integrate their software products. Posting a laundry list of the benefits of each partner’s products doesn’t actually show customers the true benefit of both partners’ software components working together. Instead, the companies can use video to bring the integration to life and actually walk users through use cases and demonstrate how the new integration will work — in a way that makes the benefits immediately apparent.

Create compelling stories to strengthen your brands — and your partnership
The key to putting together a great video that will boost your partnership is making sure that your selected video producer truly understands both companies, their particular industry or industries, the benefits of the new partnership and its offering, and what it takes to capture viewers’ interest and clarify the message for them.

A quality video producer has not only specific skills and knowledge about video but also these qualities:

• A thorough understanding of your company and your industry
• A tried and consistent method for researching others
• A strong foundation of communication for finalizing details

Put these pieces together, and you end up with the story of your partnership and its benefits. And compelling storytelling is the quickest way to strengthen your brand and connect with your existing — and future — clients.

 

A Case in Point
Lithium Technologies worked with Digital Dazzle to establish a systematic approach for using its partners’ distribution channels and eliciting leads from partner accounts.

The solution included creating Partner Enablement Videos, which were used, first, to train each partner’s sales teams and, secondly to present to prospective customers. According to Henry Bruckstein, then Lithium’s director of partner alliances, Lithium enjoyed a dramatic increase in qualified leads from its partners, a significant acceleration in the sales process and an upsurge in the number of sales.

 

Help Yourself
So you’ve decided to create a Partnership Enablement Video. There are few things that you can do to make the process easier and more successful:

• Be committed to the partnership. Don’t get possessive about which company is the “stronger” partner;
• Know your selling points and communicate them to the video experts;
• List the benefits and differentiators of your joint partner solution; and
• State what problems your joint partner solution solves.