Automated Transcript
Welcome to the Partner Strategy Network Podcast. I'm Mark and I'm here with Wesley Coelho. Hey Wesley, how you doing today?
Hey, Mark. Doing well.
Well, this week's topic for our partner podcast is a tough topic: When should I fire my partners? Wesley, what does it mean to you to fire a partner?
To me, that means you're terminating the partner agreement so that they no longer get the benefits of being a partner.
Okay. Well, why would you want to do that?
Like many things partners follow the 80-20 rule or some approximation of that. And you're going to do the most business with a tiny fraction of your partners. 80% or more of them are going to produce very little or nothing. And some of them will even be downright deadbeat partners that won't even respond to you.
And when people look at this and they say, well, these unproductive partners can be costly. You have to train them. You have to provide demo environments. You've got to keep them up to date. Why would you keep them around?
Well, you know, I've often thought about, firing someone, nobody wants to do that, but I think of it maybe as a kind of pruning or trimming the tree, right? Over time, you end up accumulating a lot of partners and one thing's for sure. the partners that were maybe the best potential or the most strategic five years ago, I can almost guarantee are not the ones that are the most strategic today. So if nothing else, it seems like it would make sense to prune the partner tree and figure out which of the ones that are the highest values and which are the ones that you have to downgrade or decrease resources, or maybe outright fire them.
So, what do you think, should you fire your partners or should you do something that's not quite so drastic?
I can understand the motivation to get rid of some of your underperforming partners. My personal opinion is that you should absolutely not fire your partners. You can put them in a category or a tier where all of their benefits are self-service and they don't cost you anything.
And if it's not costing you anything. Just leave them alone. There's no benefit. There's nothing to be gained through going through the trouble and the expense of cutting them loose.
I might argue just the fact that they're there, maybe diverts you or your team's attention. So maybe there’s some costs that you don't really own up to, but there's always a cost for having a bunch of partners, unless that's part of the strategy and having large numbers of partners in your ecosystem gives you some sort of benefit. Is that right?
I would agree that you have to be careful if you're going to keep them around, you have to keep them around in a zero touch environment. So they've got to be in a tier that doesn't cost you any time.
The reality I've seen as a lot of times, there's difficulty of recognizing that the partnership isn't working out. And so, you have to maybe disclose to the board that the big plans you had didn't work out or the numbers weren't, happening.
One of the things I've liked to do is make sure that your partnership contract is on a one or two year basis. Auto renews every year on an annual basis. And so maybe that's maybe the lower friction way of gracefully exiting a partnership is you just don't renew.
In my opinion, you still need to take a proactive step to tell people you're terminating, you're not renewing. And that's a slight that is really unnecessary. That's gonna leave a sour taste in the mouth of that partner. You're kind of telling them to take a hike. And then the next time that they need the capabilities that you offer, they're going to be encouraged to go get that from the competitor.
And you never know when they might come back and have an opportunity for you. And if they’re already a partner and you are investing no effort in them now it's also no effort to reinstate.
Okay, well, I get it. So your preference is don't burn any bridges, don't know when you might need some friends down the road. And that makes sense, but is there any time where you absolutely should fire a partner?
Yes. So there are certain situations where you should fire a partner immediately. And one example is if they start competing. That's obviously time where you need to cut ties. Another time is if they just don't align with your company's values, maybe they show a lack of integrity.
They did something and that's created some mistrust. Then that's a good time to fire your partners. It’s also important is to look out for any partners that have harmed a customer relationship. If that partner's customers are complaining, then you should take a serious look at whether it's time to cut that partner.
Well, that's great. This is really great information. If anyone wants more information, they can go to the Partners Strategy Network LinkedIn group.