#126 Greg Fox: Building a Best-of-Breed Partner Program

After building successful partner programs at Cisco, Citrix, and Huawei, today Greg is creating Reliant’s ecosystem strategy to co-build, co-innovate, and co-sell optimal edge computing solutions.

In this episode, Greg Fox, Director of Business Development & Strategic Alliances at Reliant, joins Ecosystem Aces and discusses how he builds a best-of-breed partner program.

Greg shares:

• How Reliant creates their ecosystem strategy
• How Reliant finds the right partners
• Greg’s advice and best practices for partner leaders

Creating an Ecosystem Strategy

The first step to building a successful ecosystem is creating a partnering vision. Achieving alignment within your company and support for your partner ecosystem means being able to identify how your company benefits from these partnerships. For example, Reliant highlights extending sales reach, expanding the company’s addressable market, and building partnering DNA/competency as the main objectives of their ecosystem.

After establishing a partnering vision, your company should consider the experience you want to build for your partners. Reliant implements repeatable processes around the identification, onboarding, and management of partners to ensure an optimal and easily scalable partner journey. Some of these processes include how the company activates, nurtures, and markets joint sales opportunities.

Finding The Right Partners

Implementing a new ecosystem strategy means not only having a process to identify new partners but also considering the fit of existing partners. Reliant determines partner fit by seeing which companies share their view of the market and potential opportunities. How your company builds the capabilities of existing partnerships, such as whether you can move from reselling to co-selling with a partner, is extremely important to consider when creating a new ecosystem strategy.

The success of your joint offerings is largely dependent on its unique capabilities. Because of this, Reliant finds new partners by evaluating the value they may bring through their unique differentiated value proposition. Reliant also finds partners who have customers in different verticals to expand the market of their offerings.

Greg’s Best Advice For Partner Leaders

Partner leaders and managers never get enough credit. It’s often thankless and you may often find yourself as your own biggest advocate. This is why Greg’s best advice for partnering professionals is to make sure you have the measurement systems, the data, and quality reporting to show value and continue to advocate for yourself and for your ecosystem.

A tip that Greg gives when advocating for your ecosystem is to always keep the customer first. Explain the value these partnerships are delivering to customers, as customers are looking for whole solutions and services that include partners delivering key pieces of that solution. The full lifecycle, end-to-end solutions that customers expect can only be created with an effective and engaged ecosystem of partners.

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Listen and Subscribe to the Audio Podcast here:

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126: Building a Best-of-Breed of Partner Program

After building successful partner programs at Cisco, Citrix, and Huawei, today Greg is creating Reliant’s ecosystem strategy to co-build, co-innovate, and co-sell optimal edge computing solutions. In this episode, Greg...

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Links & Resources

• Learn more about how WorkSpan helps customers accelerate their ecosystem flywheel through Co-selling, Co-innovating, Co-investing, and Co-marketing.
• Join the WorkSpan Community to engage with other partner ecosystem leaders on best practices, news, events, jobs, and other tips to advance your career in partnering.
• Find insightful articles on how to lead and get the most out of your partner ecosystem on the WorkSpan blog.
• Download the Best Practices Guide for Ecosystem Business Management
• Download the Ultimate Guide for Partner Incentives and Market Development Funds
• To contact the host, Chip Rodgers, with topic ideas, suggest a guest, or join the conversation about modern partnering, he can be reached on Twitter, LinkedIn, or send Chip an email at: chip@workspan.com

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