Why trust and transparency hold the key to channel success

The IT channel moves at such a pace that it can be easy to forget the foundations on which effective partnerships are built. Great technology and support are a must, of course. In helping to enable positive sales engagements, they are a key criteria for vendors and partners alike. But arguably even more important are the bonds of trust and transparency that both sides must forge.

Trust in particular takes a long time to build, but is easy to lose. Maintaining it over time can be challenging, but the results speak for themselves: long-term relationships, significant repeat business and referrals, and innovative new initiatives and products to build excitement and generate new sales.

How to get there

What creates strength in channel engagement? Is it just about the lowest price? Or who responds the quickest? Or who puts on the best social activities and the biggest events? They might have some impact on partners and vendors, but are certainly not the key to building lasting relationships. That falls to trust and transparency.

The two go hand in hand. Channel businesses can’t hope to build trust if they are not transparent. And transparency is meaningless without trust.

To create these bonds, it’s critically important to be true to your word, time and again. It’s not just a job for the channel manager, but the entire team. Only with everyone on board and pulling in the same direction will the business as a whole be seen in the same positive light. Another vital part of building trust and transparency is by taking responsibility if and when something goes wrong. There will always be hiccups in managing dynamic and complex business relationships. The key is to take ownership when something happens and ensure it’s brought to a swift resolution.

In fact, it’s during the difficult times that the strongest partnerships are often formed. It’s when you learn how important that mutual understanding is to drive the quickest and most equitable outcomes.

Trusting your vendor

These bonds of trust will carry partners through some potentially tricky times—such as during contract renewals, when partner managers are most nervous that vendor relationships may fall apart. By working closely with their vendor counterparts throughout the lifecycle of a contract, savvy partner sellers can not only protect the renewal but even gain the upsell.

In the cybersecurity channel, trust is, of course, critical not only for the vendor-partner relationship but also between vendor/partner and end customer. IT and security buyers are increasingly putting their faith in fewer vendors to deliver their threat prevention, detection and response capabilities across the entire attack surface. But although this makes absolute sense from an operational and cost-control perspective, consolidating in this way puts more pressure on the relationship. Both customer and channel partner need to be sure that their chosen vendor can deliver expertise across a broad sweep of capabilities.

That’s where it makes sense to look at players who can bring decades of industry expertise to bear, with global threat intelligence and a true platform-play built from the ground up.