Top 3 Roadblocks in Modern Successful Partner Ecosystems
The future of business is ecosystems. Watch out for these crippling three barriers when building your partner ecosystem:
- Delay in time to communicate – Because we are human, we sometimes need to speak with someone to get quick answers. Interpersonal communication is essential in understanding each other. If an email takes two weeks to reach your partner is typically outdated or is easily misconstrued.
- “Professor Mehrabian combined the statistical results of the two studies and came up with the now-famous—and famously misused— the rule that communication is only 7 percent verbal and 93 percent non-verbal.” Ubiquity – The 7% rule”
- Turnover is high, and tenure is down – Sales roles tend to turnover, which makes it difficult when tracking whom you should communicate with at your partner organization.
- “The average salesperson turnover rate is now 34%” – Linkedin 2017 article”Average sales rep tenure is now 1.5 years, down from 3 years in 2010″ – 2018 report by the Bridge Group
- Change in territory – Territories are always under construction. Partner alignment isn’t a one-time event.
- “Companies may change their existing structure to increase efficiency and reduce lost selling time. The other significant reasons for restructuring are alignment with changes in the market, product line, or go-to-market strategy. – Sales Team Restructuring to Improve Performance July 7, 2019, Sameer Kolhekar”
Here’s the good news: you can tackle each one of these roadblocks by leveraging data and technology to enable better connections. Ecosystems are not going away. In fact they are increasing in sophistication and complexity. Partnering is a critical skill for all salespeople in navigating ecosystems.