I’ve been working on developing and evolving the Streamdata.io partner program, trying to move forward conversations with other service providers in the space that have existed long before I started working on things, as well as other newer relationships that I’ve helped bring in. I’m fascinated by how partner programs work, or do not work, and have invested a lot of time trying to optimize and improve how I do my own operations, and assist my partners and clients in evolving and delivering on their own partner vision.
It is difficult to establish, and continue meaningful and balanced partnerships between technology service and tooling providers. Sometimes providers have enough compatibility and synergy, that they are able to hit the ground running with meaningful activities that strengthen, and build partnership momentum. We are trying to establish a meaningful, yet effective way of measuring partner activity, and understanding the value that is being generated, and where reciprocity exists. Looking at the following activities produced by Streamdata.io and it’s partners:
- Partner Page - Being published to both of our partner pages.
- Testimonials - Providing quotes for each other about our services.
- Blog Posts - Publishing blog posts about partnership and each others services.
- White Papers - Publishing white papers or guides about partnership and each others services.
- Press Releases - Working on join press releases about partnership and each others services.
- Integrations - Publishing open source repositories demonstrating integration and usage of each others services.
- Workshops - Conduct workshops for each others customers, helping deliver each others services within our ecosystems.
- Business - Actually provide business referrals from our customers, and conversations occurring across both companies.
There are other activities we like to see happening, but these eight areas represent the most common exchanges we encourage amongst our partners. The trick is always pushing for reciprocity across all these areas, help deliver on a balanced partnership, and make sure there is equal value being generated for both sides of the partnership. Each of our partners look at this list of activities differently, requiring different levels of participation, and having expectations of results set at different levels.
There are some “potential partners” who don’t want to event talk about any of these items until we have that first business deal. While other partners are more than happy when we engage in these activities, but are hesitant about reciprocating on their side. We are more than happy to take the lead on many of these activities, but increasingly we are tracking on the activity on both sides of the track, to help quantify each partnership, guide our conversations, and our marketing, development, and evangelism efforts. Leaving us to ask regularly of our partners, what have you done for us lately? While also asking ourselves the same question about what we have done for our partners.
