I met recently with a prospect from a very large and prestigious partnering company. They have just under 15,000 registered partners in the US alone. The core group represents around 6,000 partners. Of course they have deployed just about every system you might think of to help manage this colossal effort in partnering, many of them expensive custom facilities created specifically for them.
From our discussion, I believe that AccountMaven.com offers them advantages that they are not currently realizing with their existing efforts. Specifically the ability for partners to work with other partners within the channel. Also the ability to tap into partner networks from other companies to help them with their recruitment efforts. Finally in adding to the methods of communication they use to communicate with their partners particularly as joint solutions with their strategic alliance partners.
However, what stuck me most of all from our conversation was the obvious scale of this partnering effort as opposed to probably 90% of all companies out there. If you have 15,000 partners with a core active group of 6,000 to activate you can pretty much not worry about the problems of scaling to critical mass. You have mass all of your own and your partners supposedly will adopt and participate in your partnering efforts and facilities assuming they are worthwhile. For most small to medium sized companies its a very different scenario. Why would one of those same 15,000 partners using this companies facilities come along to those of a relatively diminutive organization and give them the same level of ‘mindshare’? The reality is that they would not, and this speaks to the consistent problem that is evident in the partnering market.
Spending money on developing, deploying and maintaining partnering facilities that nobody uses or even logs into is plainly a wasted investment. It’s hard to understand how companies justify continuing to go down this route in the face of this experience. A different approach is warranted and for the the small to medium sized company, that approach can only be as part of an integrated, multi-dimensional community that has existing scale to tap into.
The net benefits to each and every member of the sales community that participates in that community is greatly enhanced with the addition of both new companies and new individual members. These are the so called ‘networking effects’ which have shown themselves so effective in creating the leaders of the Internet.
Posted by accountmaven 
