A KPI or key performance indicator is the measure of the performance of a particular entity. In this lesson, we’ll take a look at a few important and commonly used Partnership KPIs:
Sales performance
Co-marketing performance
Product Engagement
Customer success
Lesson two
·
10 minutes
Deep-dive on Partnership KPIs
A KPI or key performance indicator is the measure of the performance of a particular entity. In this lesson, we’ll take a look at a few important and commonly used Partnership KPIs:
Sales performance
Co-marketing performance
Product Engagement
Customer success
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This is why you entered the partnership in the first place—for sales synergies and ultimately, to win new business.
Co-selling is when two businesses with similar target audiences form a strategic alliance to sell each other’s product(s) and/or service(s).
And when it comes to landing new business, partners can help in two main ways:
Partner-sourced revenue: There is no existing sales opportunity, and a partner helps source one for you.
Partner-influenced revenue: There is an existing sales opportunity, and a partner helps influence the deal to close.
How to measure Partner-sourced revenue
We can measure partner-sourced sales performance by tracking:
The number of new leads passed over from that partner
The number of opportunities that moved to the pipeline from those leads
The number of deal wins that were converted from those opportunities
For example, your partner spoke with their customers about your products at their recent event and arranged some followup calls with you and these customers. Off the back of these calls, you generated some new opportunities for your Sales teams.
How to measure Partner-influenced revenue
We can measure partner-influenced sales performance by tracking:
The number of opportunities where the partner was involved
The resulting number of deal wins secured through that partner’s involvement
For example, you’re finding it hard to get traction in an account where you’ve had some positive conversations in the past. If a partner helps you gain introductions to key people within the account to move the needle, their involvement should be attributed as helping to close the deal.
Using partner sales performance tools that link to your CRM can be helpful for staying on top of these metrics. Reveal enables you to track all your partner-sourced and partner-influenced opportunities so so you’re the first to know when your partnerships made an impact.
(Joint) Customer Success
Joint customer success refers to your common base of customers between your company and your partner, that are using your joint product or solution. The nature of this combined offering depends on the type of business you’re both in.
Example A: A technology integration so that two software applications can be used together to tackle a new use case.
Example B: An insurance provider and an airline coming together on a new travel insurance package for booked flights.
Whether you have technology integration partners, or service/solutions partners, you’ll have mutual customers. The KPIs for this common customer base will vary depending on the nature of your joint solution but generally speaking they can include:
Customer Overlap: How many customers do you share in common?
NPS: What is the average NPS score for users of the joint solution?
Renewal rate: What is the renewal rate of your common customers?
Upsell/Cross-sell: For common customers, how often does this partner help us with upsell / cross-sell?
This KPI category is especially relevant if you have technology partnerships.For instance, this can be seen with HubSpot:
A focus on measuring customer overlaps
Tracking customer overlaps can be especially helpful to the product teams as well. This was the case for Stanislas Pollet as Global Head of Growth at Payfit. By having insight into the customer overlap with their partners (using Reveal’s account mapping features), Stanislas' team are able to approach product integration decisions grounded in data rather than making some assumptions. In other words, they use customer overlaps with partners to evaluate the potential value of any integration before launching it in the market.
Another category for measuring partnerships’ success is their engagement with your product.
Ideally your partners should be invested in your product to a certain degree. For example, if you provide product training, partners that have taken time to educate their teams up on your product are probably going to be more valuable to you in the long run.
Other considerations that fall into this bucket include:
Has this partner developed an integration with your product?
How many individuals have been certified on your product?
Does this partner have a (sandbox) account? How often do they use it?
Do they use more than one product in your portfolio?
An example is networking giant Cisco Systems. Having accredited partners is a priority for their business strategy and therefore a top KPI that they track. The number of certified individuals is a minimum requirement for different tiers in their partner program, and dictates the access to resources and support the partners get from Cisco.
Co-marketing Performance
Co-marketing is when two (or more) companies collaborate to market to a shared audience. For example, co-publishing an ebook or co-hosting a webinar to reach the same target audience.
Making sure you select the right partner to co-market with is key. Account mapping helps you make an educated choice, based on your audience and personas’ overlap. The more audience you have in common, the more valuable co-marketing will be. CRM-based account mapping automatically calculates that overlap for you; learn more here. Additionally, make sure your Co-Marketing Agreement includes GDPR compliance, you can use our template here.
Co-marketing KPIs can relate to various tactics you’ve agreed on:
The number of joint social posts
The number of joint case studies
The number of co-publications
The number of webinars or events co-hosted with partners
But ultimately, the biggest co-marketing KPI to track is the number of EQLs passed over from the partner off the back of these tactics. Which means now would be the right moment to make the distinction between MQLs and EQLs:
MQLs or Marketing Qualified Leads are leads with high likelihood to convert into a sales opportunity, sourced from the marketing team’s efforts.
EQLs or Ecosystem Qualified Leads are leads with high likelihood to convert into a sales opportunity, sourced from your partners or wider ecosystem
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