Despite the current global pandemic environment, subscription businesses are having a field day. Offering high levels of convenience, they enable customers to pay for services as they consume them while ensuring a predictable revenue for the organization. They also help streamline the purchasing journey and help in building long-term relationships with clients. However, operating and scaling a subscription billing business requires substantial focus and effort, especially in the area of partner management.
Also Read: How Subscription Businesses Can Ensure Growth Amid COVID-19
The Importance of Partners
In the subscription world, scaling the business can be extremely tough. However, if you leverage a strong partner network, new customer acquisition can be accelerated. Because partners already have strong sales teams and market coverage, you can leverage their reach to penetrate existing or new markets, increase your customer base, scale your business, and boost your revenue.
Given how indispensable partners have become to subscription businesses, success depends a lot on the web of partners that work around-the-clock to meet targets and drive customer satisfaction. Partners have a big role to play in driving the scalable success of subscription businesses; they help
- Create multiple channels to sell the company’s core offerings
- Take offers to all corners of the market
- Support (and extend) the company’s existing sales team
- Improve the reach of products
- Drive higher revenue (and growth) for the business
Key to Effective Partner Management
Given that establishing and maintaining long-term relationships with partners is key to scalability and profitability, most businesses need to focus on effective partner management and reach their business goals with far greater speed and ease.
A unified invoice software like OneBill’s Multi-Level Channel Management or MLCM is a great way to effectively manage your web of partners and ensure their goals are aligned with the goals of your company – so you can scale your business without interruption.
Using such robust partner management platforms, you can:
Bring all partners into a single billing ecosystem:
Managing hundreds of partners (and their billings) across products and locations can get excruciatingly painful. But not when you have an invoice software with MLCM in place. MLCM allows you to bring all your partners as well as resellers & agents into a single billing ecosystem, so you no longer have to rely on different systems to bill different partners. Using a single system, you can effectively manage all billing-related tasks and drive efforts towards enhancing their lifetime value.
Resell products at a specific price range:
With the subscription business landscape constantly evolving, it is important for organizations to keep up with the pace of change. Instead of using a standard approach to resell products to all your partners across all locations, it is important to carefully define your strategy based on where they are located, the customers they are serving, and the relationship you have with them. Using a robust revenue management software, you can resell products to your partners at a specific price range – and contribute to their profit which eventually will have a bearing on your profit.
Carefully define their incentive models:
Subscription billing businesses need to constantly empower their partners, so they are motivated to help grow their business and revenue. MLCM allows you to carefully define your channel partner incentive program, so you can offer valuable rewards that help your partners achieve your goals as well as their own. Since channel partners often vary in type and size depending on your market, you can offer personalized incentives to different partners and boost their loyalty. In the long run, such personalization can help boost sales and improve market reach.
Enable access to business and self-care portals:
For subscription businesses, managing partners – although tough – is extremely crucial to business success. To encourage your partners to fully invest in your products’ success, it is important to foster deep connections. Using MLCM, you can deliver business (CPQ, Catalog etc), and self-care portals that provide your channel partners access to the information and tools they need to sell your products more effectively. Such access helps in closing more deals and achieving greater profits. It can also help drive partner engagement to the next level – thus strengthening the bond you share with your partners for the long-term success of your organization.
Automate the invoicing process:
In a subscription-based business, invoicing partners is just as complex as invoicing your customers – given the hundreds of distributors, resellers, affiliate partners, and agent partners you deal with. Automating this error-prone and time-consuming process can help overcome common challenges. A next-gen invoice software helps you automate and streamline the partner invoice process – from beginning to end and manage transactions in real-time as and when they happen. Using the platform, you can eliminate manual paperwork, accelerate approvals, allow white-labeling and shorten your invoicing process – all while improving partner experience and loyalty.
If you want to expand your market reach and make your products accessible to a wider customer base, building a strong partner network and efficiently managing it is essential for continued success.
OneBill’s revenue management software allows you to bring all your partners into a single billing ecosystem. You can resell products at a specific price range, carefully define partner incentive models, deliver business and self-care portals, and automate the invoicing process – and empower them to improve topline for themselves as well as for your subscription business.
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