The Partner Cycle

Intro

Creating lasting relationships with partners and customers is now more important than ever in this era of digital and technology integration. That's why I want to shed light on LAER, a dynamic framework that underpins the approach I take with channel partnership success. LAER stands for Land, Adopt, Expand, and Renew, and it's all about nurturing connections at every step of the journey – from the first handshake to long-term collaboration.

Why LAER

As technology providers strive to create seamless partnerships and offer integrated solutions, partner engagement takes center stage in ensuring customer success. LAER is a framework for establishing an initial relationship with a partner or customer, and building on it over time so there’s collective mindshare at every touchpoint, from awareness to acquisition and beyond.

In the following sections, I'll share my experiences and insights through the lens of the LAER cycle, breaking down the primary goals, actionable steps, and key takeaways at each stage.

So, let's dive in and explore how the LAER model can steer us toward lasting partner success.

LAER Cycling: The customer engagement journey is continuous, iterative and infinite. Enjoy the ride!

Land

Goal

Prioritize relationship building across Partner teams and define the ownership structure. It’s all about the relationship.

Actions taken

In-depth onboarding presentation to the partner sales team that covers joint solution, product demo, use cases with ROI, and discover questions for sales reps to ask customers.

Set up channel partners with sales & marketing resources so they are informed and can go sell. Work with marketing to help out content. For instance, I’ve found having a clickable playbook is one of best tools in my arsenal.

Chart and communicate ownership between us and the partner, who is responsible for what at each stage of customer journey. All teams are driving towards the same north star goals and there’s joint accountability.

Lesson learned

Talk early on with sales leaders to understand what motivates them, what drives impact, what are they trying to optimize for personally. Getting to know their sources of motivation and success factors can remove obstacles later on. I use this a starting point in the relationship to boost collaboration and trust.

Adopt

Goal

Shorten the time-to-value for customer product adoption and activation rate.

Actions taken

Reach out to sales leadership and ask to meet once per quarter (QBRs) to go over customer onboarding, pipeline, collect feedback, and review user adoption metrics.

Work cross-functionally with enablement, sales, and marketing so we're all pulling in the same direction on product adoption.

Create micro-learning training sessions (LMS) - I like to use Google Classroom as an engaging way to gain collective mindshare with partner sales reps on adoption enablement projects.

Lesson learned

Don’t underestimate the importance of a feedback mechanism to collect input from both partners, customers, and sales teams. Find out what speed bumps are slowing things down, what are the blockers, what can be done better. Use feedback to iterate and refine the strategy continuously.

Micro-learning Management Systems like Google Classroom boosts enablement and can be fun!

Expand

Goal

Keeping partners updated on product upsell opportunities and strengthen the handoff between sales and customer success teams.

Actions taken

Meet with account executives quarterly to have customer review sessions and rank value-based selling targets.

Re-review discovery questions with SDRs and prepare marketing resources - case studies, new product features, customer advocacy content - for next tier enterprise product.

Stay in touch with account executives via Slack, phone, and email so customer data is communicated symmetrically across partner sales and customer success teams.

Lesson learned

Keep in continuous communication with partners, making sure all teams are in the loop and armed with the latest product offerings to execute on product expansion.

Renew

Goal

Measure partner engagement and personalized check-ins to get out ahead of potential churn and maximize partner-sourced revenue.

Actions taken

Run analysis on customer lifecycle management (CLM) and customer journey mapping to measure frequency of support and customer interaction patterns.

Monitor key engagement KPIs and prioritize ‘red-flag’ customers, where I may see a decrease in daily logs or increase in customer complaints.

Be available to schedule 1-on-1 monthly conversations with account executives to go over their pipeline for renewing.

Lesson learned

Act as a ‘farmer’ for the partner by uncovering trapped value with current customers. Renewals are tied to platform activation, adoption, and the value realized by customer. Metrics and KPIs are the compass that guides us through this journey, helping us understand how well we're doing at every phase of the customer relationship.

Conclusion

I have found this model to be the most effective within a dynamic partnership ecosystem. There’s an evolving, forward-motion to the LAER framework that I love. It underscores the importance of actively communicating, collaborating and trust-building among partners to reach business goals. When it’s fully operational, new insights and innovation can come from navigating the journey. Soon, the partner cycle will begin to payoff in a big way!

If you received any value from this or have feedback, I would love to hear from you. If you feel others would get value, please share.