In our whitepaper series, “How to Engage the Channel for Successful SaaS Renewals,” we talk a lot about the importance of “stickiness,” an informal measure of engagement for both end-users and partners.
In the world of best practices, stickiness begins in the very early stages of offer development – the portfolio planning stage. Here, the offer team must make sure that the vendor’s offer includes not only a well-positioned and compelling performance value proposition for partners (i.e. form/feature/function at a price point). But it must also include an equally strategic and compelling business value proposition.
This business value proposition (or BVP) has to do a lot of “heavy lifting” for the vendor. To clarify, it opens the door to partner consideration and previews the tone of the business relationship. To be effective (i.e. differentiate the vendor and promote stickiness), the BVP must answer four key questions that partners are thinking about, but may never ask out loud:
In order to address initial partner questions and concerns, a solid BVP must:
Vendors working SaaS renewals through partners know that the business can get lost for lack of partner interest – unless the full financial opportunity is understood and communicated. The financial component of the BVP, then, needs to include documentation of:
This section of the BVP is all about communicating the implied profitability of working with a vendor who:
It includes documentation of:
A statement of revenue opportunity is meaningless if the revenue isn’t recognized. As such, if you’re currently selling SaaS renewals through partners, you know this is an issue that frustrates you both! It’s no secret that a massive amount of renewals revenue is left behind. There is a sizeable gap between “expected renewals revenue” and “realized renewals revenue”. Why? Many partners just aren’t very good at monitoring their databases.
Therefore, if you have a SaaS renewals platform that automates database monitoring for the partner, you have a powerful component of your BVP that you can and should leverage up-front AND at every stage of the business relationship!
To conclude, credible, substantial revenue opportunity. Ease of doing business. Maximum revenue recognition. These three factors form the cornerstone of a solid business value proposition for partners selling SaaS renewals. For further reading on this and other SaaS renewals best practices, please refer to our second whitepaper in the series entitled “Best Practices for Leveraging the Channel.”