The essential guide for partner training programs for businesses

Let's say you own a successful business and have plans to scale and expand to other regional markets. Setting up a new base and building a regional team can be a time-consuming and risky investment decision. To overcome these hurdles, the best strategy is to build a strong channel partner network in your targeted regions. Once you build a channel partner network, they'll act as intermediaries that can help distribute your products and services in that particular market. The regional presence also helps with building customer trust and the much-needed cultural connect.

Building and nurturing a channel partner network is complex and time-consuming, but it's also a rewarding journey for your business growth. In this blog post, we'll explore the advantages of channel partners when expanding your business, discuss types of channel partners, and the best practices to follow when creating a partner training program.

Key reasons why channel partners are vital to a business

Market reach

Channel partners can help businesses expand into new geographic regions or target specific customer segments. They can act as a regional business unit actively contributing to the growth of the business. 

Customer relationships

Having a regional team that businesses can reach out to directly gives customers the confidence when using a product or service. 

Sales expertise

Most channel partners have specialized sales teams who have a good knowledge of market demand. They can contribute to regional marketing and sales strategies to improve the quality of leads and increase sales. 

Cost efficiency

Expanding to newer markets can be an expensive move. Finding a new office space, hiring regional teams, and the regional adaptation can be a tedious process. Partnering with regional partners can help reduce the costs associated with sales and distribution. 

Local market insights

Channel partners act as seasoned entities providing valuable regional market insights, local market trends, regional preferences, and competitor landscapes.  

Customer support

Channel partners can elevate the business by offering localized customer support in regional languages. The language-friendly support significantly improves customer satisfaction and trust. They also can help with product installations and implementations. 

Brand awareness

As the channel partner network actively grows, brand awareness and visibility grow progressively in that region, too. 

The importance of training channel partners

To ensure the success of your channel partner network, it's imperative to invest in robust partner training programs that help educate and empower your partner teams. Once these channel partners are adequately trained, it'll be easy for them to deploy and support your business offerings in that region. You should also take into account that partner training is a continuous process, so you should systematically create training programs for new updates and latest offerings.

Types of channel partners and their required training 

For most businesses, channel partners can be broadly classified into three types depending on market needs and business goals.

Distributors

Distributors are responsible for stocking and distributing the products to other retailers in a particular region. They require training on product features, pricing, promotions, and sales techniques.

Value-added reseller (VAR)

The VAR channel partners add more value to products by customizing and integrating them with other solutions. These types of partners will already have deep expertise in a particular field and can customize multiple solutions to satisfy the customers' needs. They need training on technical aspects, customization options, and integration capabilities.

Franchises

Franchises operate under a licensing agreement and follow a standardized business model. They require comprehensive training on the franchise's brand, operations, and customer service standards.

How to train your channel partners using TrainerCentral

Now that we've discussed the importance of training channel partners and how it can impact the business growth, let's take a look at how a typical business can conduct their entire partner training program on TrainerCentral.   TrainerCentral provides an all-in-one integrated platform that businesses can use to run, manage, and scale their entire partner training program in one single place.

Onboard and enroll partners in appropriate training programs 

For growing businesses, managing partner sign-ups and manually enrolling them in appropriate training programs can be a time-consuming and daunting task. TrainerCentral simplifies this process by providing a structured signup and auto-enroll workflow. Using the no-code website builder, you can create a dedicated webpage through which the partners can directly enroll in the program. Additionally, there's a manual invite process for bulk inviting partners to a specific training program.

You can also automate the enrollment workflow by integrating your CRM with TrainerCentral. Using Zapier or Zoho Flow, you can automatically onboard trainers to training bundles. For example, let's say you've integrated your CRM with TrainerCentral. Now when you add a partner record in CRM, that user will be automatically invited to the training program. You can refer to this blog post for instructions on setting up this enrollment workflow.

Create custom learning paths for partners 

Regional channel partners vary widely in size and expertise. Some may specialize in a particular field, while others might be new to the industry. To cater to these diverse needs, businesses need to create a personalized learning path for each partner. To ensure an improved learning experience, businesses can create courses, bundle them, and offer them to partners in a sequential manner. This systematic approach enables each partner to follow a curated learning path tailored to their specific expertise level.

Create engaging courses with media-rich elements  

Offer an immersive training experience for your trainers by offering multi-media rich courses. Upload videos, images, PDFs, and presentations as part of the training programs, and make them easily digestible. You can also use the AI-assistance feature when creating curriculum and content for the courses.

Offer courses in multiple languages 

TrainerCentral supports training materials in different languages, making it easy for channel partners to learn in their native language. You can create training courses in different languages, bundle them, and offer them to regional partners. The multi-language subtitle options add more convenience for learners when they're watching the content.

Conduct live workshops 

Nothing beats the power of real-time training. TrainerCentral offers a built-in live workshop module that you can use to conduct live classes on both a one-time and a recurring basis. You can include live workshops as part of the training curriculum and auto-enroll partners; you'll also send email reminders before the event. In case of a no-show, you also have an option to email the session recordings directly to the partners.

Gauge and certify partners 

Evaluation plays a pivotal part in ensuring the quality of training. TrainerCentral offers a comprehensive evaluation tool that businesses can use to assess partners during training. Features such as minimum pass percentage, reattempts, and pass to unlock the next course help streamline the evaluation process without harming the learning experience.  

TrainerCentral offers a drag-and-drop certificate builder tool that you can use to design certificates aligned with your brand. You can add dynamic elements, like name and course details. You can also include a unique ID to the certificate to ensure its authenticity. You can also create certificate templates, store them in a centralized library, and map them to courses as needed.

Once the partners complete a particular training program, you can offer them downloadable e-certificates using the certificate module. These e-certificates can also be easily shared across the partner's social media channels.

Centralized performance reports 

TrainerCentral offers a centralized performance dashboard to keep track of individual learners' course progress and group level performance. Insights like engagement reports, time spent, and assessment scores help businesses make informed decisions and tweak their training programs.

Mobile-based learning 

TrainerCentral offers a learner mobile app that partners can use to access training programs from their smart phones. Not just pre-recorded courses, partners can also attend live workshops from their mobile app, enabling on-the-go learning. The learner mobile app is also white-label friendly, so you can customize the app name and icon aligned to your brand. This provides brand consistency across all digital mediums.

Advantages of a successful partner training program

Increased sales

A comprehensive training program for channel partners can help improve overall sales. It equips partners with needed knowledge that can help them sell more effectively, cross-sell additional products, and also upsell premium offerings.   

Improved customer satisfaction

Your well-trained partners can ensure better customer support, address customer issues promptly, and foster positive customer relationships. This, in turn, leads to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Reduced reputation risk

A systematic training process helps partners understand the company's standards, protocols, and procedures, which minimizes the risk of errors or poor experiences that could damage the company's reputation.

Market expansion

Having a regional team gives customers confidence when purchasing a product/service. By equipping your regional partners with appropriate knowledge and skills, they can progressively help new market segments and increase market share.

Wrapping up 

Investing time and resources in building a comprehensive partner training program is a strategic decision that can yield significant benefits for businesses. By equipping channel partners with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed, companies can drive sales growth, enhance customer satisfaction, and mitigate reputational risks. By deeply understanding the background of channel partners and leveraging the power of online training software, businesses can create effective programs that foster long-term success.