Where do your clients buy? This was a big part of a conversation with an entrepreneur recently. She was trying to leverage a B2B channel to get her solution into the hands of her B2C client. Over the past few months, she has been targeting potential channel partners with a large footprint. The product she had did not match the complementary products the partner sold. This was also the case for the end consumer; they were slightly different from her targets. Over this past week, she did some work to match her product and better understand her buyer. She ended up with a slightly different ideal customer profile and then went out and stopped by one. She had a positive engagement, found out how the partner makes decisions, and even provided a sample.

Here are a few of the things for entrepreneurs to help them confirm “where do their clients buy”.

Buyer Persona

It is key for startups to have a few tight buyer personas. This will help immensely in the sales and marketing strategy and tactics. From B2B to B2C, this can significantly impact choosing the right channel partner.

Right Partner

How do your clients buy, and from where? Your partner should have the same buyer persona. There are also other factors to consider. Does your solution need someone to explain and sell it? If so, you need to find a partner that has salespeople willing to do that. A partner also needs to be the right size from a sales perspective. They could be too small and not make sense financially; conversely, they could be too big. That could mean the initial purchase of a product is more than you would like and comes with risk. It might also mean that the organization is too large and tough to get traction with the leaders.

Selling to the Partner

There is one common mistake I often find when founders talk about selling to partners: they default to a value prop for the end user. While that is part of the value prop for the partner, it is not the whole story. What benefits will they get out of being a partner? It will often come down to incremental revenue. They do care about happy customers, but usually, there needs to be more. It is also important to set expectations for the partner about sales, marketing, and training. As an entrepreneur, you should provide expectations to them as well—things like availability, training, and support.

If you need some help working on your partner strategy and better understanding where your clients buy, please connect with me.