6 Ways to Set Yourself up for Success in the Salesforce Ecosystem
Considering that Salesforce is the largest SaaS company in the world, it should be no surprise that the AppExchange presents a tremendous opportunity for partners: In fact, a recent study shows by 2022, the Salesforce partner ecosystem will gain $5.18 for every dollar Salesforce earns. So if you’re a third-party developer, you are really missing the mark if you are ignoring this amazing marketplace. And, if your company is not positioned to participate in this ecosystem, you are likely to lag behind. That is why a clear partner ecosystem development strategy should be part of the growth plan of your business.
Here are tips on how to overcome some of the top challenges faced by ecosystem partners, and what you can do when building effective partnerships for the future.
1. Conduct a gap analysis to see where partnerships will pay off the most.
Your business needs to develop a gap analysis to identify pressing problems in different aspects of your business. This will help determine what you can do and what weak areas you need your partners to address.
A gap analysis is a method of assessing the differences in performance between a business’ information systems or software applications to determine whether business requirements are being met and, if not, what steps should be taken to ensure they are met successfully.
2. Build a culture of partnerships within your organization.
You have to define and support a culture of partnerships within the company. It is possible to build a committed partner-centric organization with effective features like partner programs, deal registrations, conflict management policies and good support systems.
Here is a great piece by JS Daw & Associates regarding building a strong partnership culture.
3. Take time to find the right partners.
Finding and building relationships with the right partners and service providers can prove to be a real test as they need to be aligned with your company needs. Your choice of partners should be based on the value proposition and benefits you can gain from these different players.
The Salesforce ecosystem is full of potential partners, but finding the ones that are the best fit for you and your organization isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Here is some additional advice on picking the right partner.
4. Find the balance between operational challenges and partnership commitments.
Companies often find it daunting to manage operational challenges with partners, while working on ongoing sales engagement to strengthen their presence in the market. It can be hard to balance competitive partner alliances in order to reduce the pressure on the distribution channels.
5. Invest in your partners!
Time and resource management is central to building trusted partner relationships. It is absolutely essential to fully support your partner’s solutions, services and sales efforts for the sustained success of your business. You also need to ensure adequate training for the technical and sales teams to improve the quality of service and support your business offers. The real challenge lies in improving the integration between service, training, certifications and community supported knowledge base being offered by partner networks.
6. Develop open channels of communication, and communicate often.
It is vital to keep communication channels with partners and vendors open in order to promote engagement and help partners grow the ecosystem as a whole. Good communication and partner-to-partner connections can lead to excellent execution and sharing of responsibilities for success.
With an ecosystem of trusted partners at your side, you have set up a win-win situation for both you and your customers. Having multiple players in a system provides incremental value, as more services attract more users to the ecosystem. However, the bigger the ecosystem, the more work that needs to be done on your end to ensure your services stand out above the rest; and that’s where great partnerships come in.
PandaDoc is Document Management Cloud Software that streamlines sales proposals, contracts and other documents with e-signatures, templates, analytics, CPQ and CRM integrations. Learn more at PandaDoc.com.
